Tony Scott's Only Fan

The Expressiveness of Ryan Gosling's Knuckles: DRIVE

2011-09-21T12:06:00.009-04:00

Yes, DRIVE is as good as you've been hearing it is.

In its finest moments, it evokes the sublime perfection of films like HEAT or RESERVOIR DOGS or THE GODFATHER, and I don't think those comparisons are (too) hyperbolic. There's a mastery of filmmaking on display here that is genuinely thrilling to watch. Or perhaps I should say hear.

Because while the photography of DRIVE is undeniably gorgeous, in turns washed out by an uncaring L.A. sun and then plunged into fluorescent-tinged darkness, it's the film's soundtrack that is particularly noteworthy to me. When I say soundtrack, I don't just mean the film's score and use of pop music, although those are incredible, but rather the entire auditory experience of DRIVE.

This is a patient movie, one that takes time to express its point and revels in silence. Gosling's performance is made up of long stares and slow burns, and every word he speaks seems to have more emphasis because of it. His knuckles do more emoting in this film than Ashton Kutcher has done in his entire cinematic career.

There are at least four shots where Gosling's knuckles express emotions like anger, tension, and fear, while his face betrays none of those things. It's a neat trick of contextual meaning that a sound like scrunching leather driving gloves can express all of these things, and it's a small example of DRIVE's audio mastery.

I've seen DRIVE twice in the five days it's been out for, and I'll undoubtedly catch it at least once more before it leaves theatres. You should, too.

The End Of My First Date With COLOMBIANA

2011-09-01T13:36:00.008-04:00

COLOMBIANA, I've been watching you for two hours now, and let's get real: who the hell do you think you are?

Let me back up for a second. I don't think you're a terrible movie, over all. You've got a sort of charming, old-school approach to action scenes, with a few notable set pieces worth seeing, and you've got a bona-fide hottie in Zoe Saldana prancing around all over the place, which makes you at least watchable for long sections where nothing appears to be happening.

But you don't end your movie with Johnny Cash's cover of "Hurt". You don't deserve it.

Now, to be honest, I don't know if any movie deserves to end with that song. It's a masterpiece, maybe the best cover of all time (music nerds can feel free to mock this uninformed statement, ideally with links). But coming after two hours of weak character scenes and half-baked Biggest Brother paranoid surveillance fantasies, ending with this song is like biting into a chocolate only to find it filled with liqueur. Or orange filling. Or that weird spongy toffee-that-isn't-toffee. You get the idea.

This sudden reversal of what I was expecting doesn't only leave me with a bad taste in my mouth; it makes me want to throw the whole thing out. I'm seeing you from a whole different perspective, like finding out you dated one of my old high school friends. You lured me in (and scored cheap points) with your overtly Tony Scott-influenced cinematography and Luc Besson's name, but you only aspire to those things. This movie is like a copy of a copy of a copy, with only the faintest lines of the original showing up: you're mostly negative space.

Also, your editing is some of the worst I've seen in a major motion picture for quite some time.

I think we're through. I guess I'll cover the bill.

My One-Sentence Review of TRANSFORMERS 3

2011-06-29T01:08:00.004-04:00

Saying TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON is better than TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN is like saying Hitler was better than Stalin.

Why SUPER 8 Is Like Minutes 8-14 Of Heaven

2011-06-14T21:08:00.010-04:00

I've had a very hard time trying to figure out how to write about SUPER 8, J.J. Abrams' Spielbergian tribute-band-but-we-do-our-own-stuff-too of a movie.

The difficulty doesn't lie in discussing the subtle Abrams reworking of Spielbergian thematic content, or the strong character work turned in by both the child and adult actors, or even a retroactive look at CLOVERFIELD as a sort of proof-of-concept and/or companion piece for this film. No, those things would all sort of write themselves, and by throwing them out there this early, I'm kind of hoping to get credit for writing four articles at once. The problem, for me, is how to talk about this film the way I want to talk about it. Because, to me, SUPER 8 really reminded me of one of the seminal moments in a movie adolescence: seven minutes in heaven.

I feel like this might be controversial, but it really shouldn't be. I mean, the argument could be made that the film is predominantly about children, and no one wants to bring sexuality anywhere near there. For example, no one wants to read (or write) about the homosexual undertones between Eliot and E.T. It would muddy the purity of that film, and our relationship to it. That's why we'll never see E.T.'s junk, even though that little freak's naked the whole movie. However, I would argue that SUPER 8 is far more about adolescence than it is about childhood. So let's just accept that as true, not leave me any angry comments about how I'm a pedophile, and move on.

You may have sensed that I have mixed feelings about SUPER 8, and this leads me to why it reminds me of seven minutes in heaven. Not any seven minutes in heaven, though. Specifically the second seven minutes you spend there.

Now, full disclosure: I feel like the whole idea of "seven minutes in heaven" may be a media creation that I'm feeding into here, and God knows I've never been to a party where such shenanigans took place. Maybe the kids have redefined the term and are doing unspeakable acts in those seven minutes, and this whole thing will come off like the Al Gore Internet-as-tubes speech of youthful sexual activity (wow, look at all the inappropriate word choices there). But in my day, and for the purposes of this article, we're talking about a straight-up makeout session.

The first makeout is a seminal moment. You never forget it. It's exhilarating, dangerous, and terrifying. You're not sure what's going on, you don't know what you're feeling, and suddenly the world seems a much larger, much more complicated place. But the second time you go in there? There's an eagerness to get back to that strange feeling, to be sure, but after a while, you kind of feel like you're going through the motions. Regardless of what happens in that room, though, you're still expected to come out of there grinning, shaking your head at the awesomeness that just transpired.

Metaphor over. There's a lot to like, and even love, about SUPER 8. But it never really seems to become more than the sum of its parts, to transcend its influences and become its own creation. It comes closest when the film is about the joy of running around shooting movies with your friends, an experience so profoundly drawn on screen that I have trouble recalling it without smiling. But the alien drama quickly overshadows that, and the film has trouble reconciling those two stories. In fact, Abrams has talked in several places about how the film originated out of these two distinct ideas, and the script still bears some of those scars from joining them. It's a bit of a Frankenstein of a movie, a cut-and-paste collage of the things we loved as kids. There is one moment, the emotional climax of the film, that attempts to link the arcs of the protagonists of the film, that just can't quite pull it off.

But if that one moment had worked for me, I think that SUPER 8 would be an instant classic. How's that for a mixed review?

Don't We, As A Society, Have A Moral Obligation To Not See THE HANGOVER PART II?

2011-05-26T14:30:00.014-04:00

I've had invitations to go see THE HANGOVER PART II every night of this weekend, including last night's 10pm "(Try Not To Feel Ridiculous When You Say) Wolfpack" screenings (you know, the ones that made $10.4 million). Unfortunately, I was (and will be) unavoidably busy doing laundry every single one of those nights.

This poster makes me wonder if

a) I would think The Hangover was "delightfully Italian" if I saw a foreign subtitled print of it and

b) where the fuck is Tea Leoni?

It's not that I live in piles of dirty laundry, my floor littered with socks doomed to never again be matched, or that I have as few outfits as Bradley Cooper has varied acting roles (potentially fun drinking game: for every scene in a Bradley Cooper movie, decide if he is playing "charming", "asshole", or "charming asshole". Then drink whatever you feel is an appropriate measure to get you through the rest of the movie.)

No, I'm not boycotting THE HANGOVER PART II because of these once-true nightmare laundry scenarios. It's because, seriously, we have to start making a stand.

My greatest fear following the success of THE HANGOVER was that it would unleash a wave of imitators that would plunge the "stupid men" comedy genre into the type of creative stagnancy and according derision normally reserved for Katherine Heigl flicks. If I want to see a decade of comedies based on unrepentant asshole men-children, I'll just look back at the last ten years of my life, thank you very much. However, I fear that the success of THE HANGOVER has engendered something far more sinister than a bunch of movies about uninteresting, unsympathetic men who learn nothing.

I'd like to say that it just didn't speak to my sophisticated, mature tastes, but if you've ever read this blog before, you know how silly that would sound. It's tempting to say that this was a movie for bros, with the excessive drinking, hooking up, and wink-wink nudge-nudge bachelor party shenanigans. But this wasn't a movie for bros; it was for bros-to-be, 13 year-olds who were still working up the courage to steal their dad's liquor and who looked to Channing Tatum with admiring eyes.

Somehow, though, these prepubescent fucks scared up hundreds of millions of dollars and made a sequel to THE HANGOVER a bygone conclusion. How did they get this kind of money? In my day, an allowance was $1 a week, which you promptly went out and wasted on slushees and comic books. Have allowance rates gone up like the proverbial 1923 German deutschmark? Or am I just a bitter and angry old man who doesn't understand why the kids are wearing the baggy pants and thinks the iPad is some sort of woman's sanitary product?

Let's not get into that. Let's put aside my problems with the underlying concepts and ideology of THE HANGOVER franchise, and try to ignore the taste of ash in my mouth when I say the phrase "THE HANGOVER franchise". What's my real problem with THE HANGOVER PART II? It's the fact that it's called THE HANGOVER PART II.

Really, Todd Phillips? PART II? With the numerals and everything? I don't know you or anything, but who the hell do you think you are?

You know which films deserve a "Part II"? THE GODFATHER PART II. BACK TO THE FUTURE PART II. RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD - PART II (if only for the sheer ridiculousness of having the word "first" right next to the words "part two", and for steadfastly ignoring the potential of an equally-ridiculous title like RAMBO: SECOND BLOOD).

So maybe you're not the first hack to try to class up his popcorn entertainment by adding some Roman numerals to his title (hell, even Tony Scott did it). But Part II indicates that your film is the next chapter in an ongoing story, and THE HANGOVER PART II is no such thing. You are, if I may, an impliar, sir.

At least have the decency to come up with a subtitle, like last week's blatant cash grab PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES, so we can all ignore your movie in a few years and pretend like it didn't blemish whatever we might have enjoyed of the first film (thanks for that, Brothers Wachowski).

Your movie, Mr. Phillips, is a return to the cynicism of the movie business of the '80s, where the rules of the game were to franchise any movie that showed any kind of financial return. This is the reason we have such revered classics as PORKY'S II: THE NEXT DAY, CANNONBALL RUN II, and MEATBALLS PART II (a title so bad it somehow manages to make the word "meatballs" sound disgusting). Some day, your new movie will join this hall of legends, and when it does, I hope the money men who bribed you to make this movie laugh you all the way to the creative poorhouse. You don't have a larger story you want to tell, so why are you pretending you do? I guarantee you no one went into the first HANGOVER pitching it as a trilogy, and I cannot wait for the day when one of you gets in front of an EPK crew for THE HANGOVER PART III: THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK (with a hilarious cameo from Leonard Nimoy!) and tries to tell me that it was always meant to be a trilogy and a series of anime shorts (fuck you for that, Brothers Wachowski).

I could go on, but I can't spend all this time whining about this movie. I've got to head to the laundromat.

Why Won't THOR Tell You It's THOR?

2011-05-11T20:54:00.000-04:00

There were several questions I had while watching THOR, Marvel's latest venture away from the printed page, but the one you see above in big bold type was the key one. Or, more specifically, what happened to THOR's title card?

THOR starts with the Paramount and Marvel Studios logos (logi? logos), but plunges us right into a cold open introducing Natalie Portman's Jane Foster (if somewhat elliptically, in what feels like a weird compromise between making a fast-paced, exciting intro about turning on your laptop and not seeing Natalie Portman's face, neither of which works and/or was a good idea to begin with) and her dream team of the sassy Kat Dennings and stellar Scandinavian Stellan Skarsgard. This is followed by a somewhat exciting TWISTER-type sequence about chasing a storm, which ends when Portman runs over a mysterious stranger and looks to the sky, asking, "where did he come from?"

BAM. Cut to black. Great pre-titles sequence, intriguing and to the point, setting up the characters and basic hook of the story. The title card "Marvel Studios and Paramount Pictures Present" comes up, and I'm starting to settle into my seat, waiting for the inevitable THOR title card, perhaps with some nice lightning effects and CG rain.

But that's where THOR switches it up on you. You're all set for the credits sequence, when the film drops you into tenth-century Norway with only the disembodied voice of Anthony Hopkins as your guide. "Huh," you're thinking, "kinda weird. I guess we're going to do the whole Norse mythology thing before we get the titles." And that's exactly what you get, complete with some pretty obvious lifts from THE LORD OF THE RINGS, which initially feels cheap and repetitive. But this is a film from Sir Kenneth Branagh, and that's when it hits you: this may be a hacky use of shots and effects from THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, but it must also be a reflexive moment, where Branagh is reminding you of that's film's epic pre-titles sequence, and asking you to cut him a little slack while he lays out his admittedly dense story.

"OK, Kenny B," you say to yourself. "I'll give you some time." So as THOR progresses, you're worrying less and less about the title. It's coming, you're sure, but it's a subconscious thing at this point, while you're asked to focus on more important things, like remembering that the Ice Giants' source of power is a kinda-silly-looking glowing blue chest that looks like Mr. Freeze's Arc of the Covenant, and that Loki is Thor's used car salesman of a brother (I bet he's the good guy).

But all of a sudden, it's thirty minutes into the film, and although you've seen an eyepatched Anthony Hopkins issue a blanket pardon for state-sponsored terrorism, Thor get his Operation Iraqi Freedom on, and a disturbing look into Stringer Bell's cosplay habits, you suddenly realize that you still haven't seen the title of the movie you're seeing.

You quell the rising panic inside of you. The title is coming. It has to be. I mean, why else would that "Marvel Studios and Paramount Pictures Present" card have been on screen twenty-five minutes ago? It just sets up an expectation about what they're presenting. They wouldn't leave us hanging like that. Would they?

Ah, wait. Thor's getting banished. It's all starting to make sense. I bet the film's gonna do one of those "here's where we started" things and then hit us with the title. That makes sense, even if it's gone on a bit long. Natalie hits him with the car, looks up, "where did he come from?" and then...

Next scene.

WHAT IS THE NAME OF YOU, MOVIE? WHAT IS IT?

Of course, I know what the name of the movie is. But why won't the movie tell me? Does the movie itself not know its name?

Things continue to play out on the screen in front of me, including an absolutely gratuitous Jeremy Renner (as Hawkeye!) cameo that adds literally nothing to the story, but I'm not even paying attention anymore. The missing title has become a splinter in my mind, a mystery that needs to be solved. The clues are bewildering, but it's the motive that has me really stumped.

It's not until the entirety of THOR's 114 minutes have played out that I finally put all the pieces together. Oh, I've finally seen the title of the movie, by the way. It was there in the credits, big and shiny and everything it should have been ninety minutes or so ago, but it didn't really click until I saw the post-credits scene.

That's where Mr. Skarsgard gets introduced to the Cosmic Cube by Samuel "the L stands for lnot even trying anymore" Jackson and Loki shows up and gets all glinty-eyed. And that's when it hit me. THOR doesn't have a pre-titles sequence because the whole movie is the pre-titles sequence. It's a tease for THE AVENGERS, through and through.

This might have been a bit harsh. I laughed several times and was genuinely entertained by quite a bit of THOR, but I'm just left wondering how they got people to pay for THE AVENGERS during it's first week of shooting. That's impressive.

Do You Need To Watch The Last 101 Minutes of Scream 4?

2011-05-01T21:36:00.008-04:00

The short answer is, no, not really.

But SCREAM 4 is 111 minutes long, and you should absolutely see the first ten minutes of this film. That's where Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven try to bury the ghost of the reflexive horror genre they helped create, and promise a return to the scares-first type of horror that kept you awake as a child.

The reason you don't really need to see the next 101 minutes is that they never really succeed at that.

Let's back up for a moment, though. I used to find it odd that the brothers Wayans felt like SCARY MOVIE needed to exist. I mean, SCREAM was funny. It was satire. I always felt like the Wayans just pushed SCREAM a little further to the margins when they made SCARY MOVIE (what they were doing with the next 5 SCARY MOVIE films, I can't begin to guess). Looking back on it though, it makes a little more sense to me.

The great trick of the first SCREAM is, of course, how it functions as both satire and the thing it satirizes. It constantly functions as both a legitimate horror film and a critique of horror films, something that the sequels struggle with and often fluctuate between, delineating one scene as the "funny" scene, and the next as the "reflexive" scene. The signifier of this tonal shift is usually the presence of Jamie Kennedy. I'm just speculating here, but I think an enterprising individual could make a drinking game out of this thematic fluctuation that would probably make SCREAM 2 slightly more tolerable (and drown the memories of THE JAMIE KENNEDY EXPERIMENT at the same time).

All of this is to say I can now understand the existence of SCARY MOVIE. The deaths in SCREAM are truly horrific. SCARY MOVIE bypassed all that satire and aimed to make a spoof of those horrific elements. The image of Drew Barrymore gutted and tied up in the tree swing is the sort of thing that sticks with you. Ditto with Rose McGowan trapped in the garage doggy door. The sequels' uncertainty about their satirical intent dull these moments of true horror, and make everything feel removed and repetitive.

The same problems exist with SCREAM 4, although the beginning seems to promise an end to this sort of reflexive repetitiveness. Williamson pulls the rug out from underneath the audience's feet twice in the opening ten minutes, scripting a film-within-a-film-within-a-film that made me cackle with the sheer ballsiness of it all. It perfectly encapsulates both the appeal and the problems of post-modern awareness in film, and ends with a character ranting about how you don't care about any of the people in these films. It's easy to see this as a direct address from Wes Craven to the audience as he surveys the world he helped create, where the outrageousness of the kills trumps any kind of meaning or feeling.

Unfortunately, the script never really delivers on this promise to return us to that mode of filmmaking. The first half hour starts to function in this mode, but then, in what feels like an obligatory "oh, right, we're a SCREAM movie" awareness, we get the seen-it-all horror nerds who run a cinema club and give us the "new rules" speech. At this point, we're back to the let's-haul-Jamie-back-from-the-dead-via-the-miracle-of-VHS scene in SCREAM 3, where the franchise just basically admits it's out of ideas and hopes you get distracted by the combined awesomeness of Parker Posey and Princess Leia.

This is a film that laughs at the idea of "a Facebook killer", but expects you to think the idea of a kid live-webcasting his life can be used to dramatic effect. It's a film that wants to be innovative and full of fresh faces, but also wants to bring Neve, Courteney, and David back, because, shucks, wouldn't it be nice to bring them all back? And it's a film that refuses to kill a single one of those people, the only way it could have had the impact it so desperately wants to have.

There are still some worthwhile moments towards the end of the film, where Williamson and Craven take some valid shots at online and celebrity culture, but the story just kind of floats around and gets trapped in the "cool kill" mode. This is made even more disappointing given not only the promise of the film's opening, but also Williamson's story-first approach on THE VAMPIRE DIARIES, one of television's finest guilty pleasures (and before anyone gets too upset about that, let's remember Williamson's THE FACULTY, which is one of the finest alien invasion/murder your teacher films ever made). But by the end of SCREAM 4, you just kind of want to watch that opening 10 minutes again.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to write THE TWEET IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE, a horror film that will truly speak to my generation.

30 DoC: Criterion Does Racism - DO THE RIGHT THING / WHITE DOG

2011-04-13T18:49:00.012-04:00

I was six years old when the L.A. Riots happened. I don't remember it ever being a part of my life at all. But I was nine when the O.J. Simpson verdict was announced, and I can vividly remember being ushered into the school library during the day so that the teachers could see the verdict announced live. I didn't understand why we were getting out of class, nor did I have the slightest idea who O.J. Simpson was, or why he was on trial, but I did grasp that something about this was important.

That night, after seeing the news, the world seemed a different place. That's the earliest I can remember being aware of the scale of the politics of race. I grew up in a tiny suburb without a ton of ethnic diversity, and there are a handful of incidents I can remember on the playgrounds where someone's race or beliefs or looks were singled out for persecution. It troubled me, but never to the point of defending those who were isolated and divided. I was never picked on, at least like that. I was always a part of the majority.

So, with that white male bias in mind, allow me to posit that in many ways, DO THE RIGHT THING is about something more than racism.

Of course, DO THE RIGHT THING is about racism, but to me, it's really about the foolishness of believing in any kind of binary system. It's a larger idea that is both incorporated and illustrated by racism.

Take the story of Love and Hate, as told to us by Radio Raheem (directly breaking the fourth wall, and cribbing from the Criterion-approved THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, soon to be watched around these parts). The story is a decidedly binary one, as Raheem makes the distinctions crystal clear: love and hate, two forces constantly at war in the universe. The story is left on a vague note, though. Raheem never really completes the story: he ends with the line, "If I love you, I love you. But if I hate you ..."

When Mookie screams "Hate!" at the end of the film, the significance of the story takes on a much more ambiguous note. Mookie's actions have a violent impact, and bear the trappings of hatred, but they are not borne of pure hatred; indeed, in some ways, they could be interpreted as coming from love. The story of love and hate is a far more complicated one than the narrative Radio Raheem suggests.

The title of the film also plays with the failings of binary choices. When Da Mayor tells Mookie to "always do the right thing," early in the film, Mookie laughs it off as something he's heard a thousand times before. At the end of the film, though, the simplicity of absolutes like "always do the right thing" have lost their meaning. Does Mookie do the right thing? Does he do the wrong thing? What about Sal? Or Radio Raheem? Destroying someone else's property is wrong, but what about when doing so could save someone's life? These aren't contrived choices, reality stretched and enhanced for dramatic impact, but rather the sort of excruciating choices life is made of. An action can be both wrong and right.

The greatest example of this blending of right/wrong, love/hate, is the Malcolm X/Martin Luther King, Jr. argument that runs through the film. The character of Smiley repeatedly shows us a picture of the two civil rights leaders smiling and shaking hands, which he decorates and attempts to sell to people throughout the movie. The two men are another example of two seemingly binary opposites that can actually co-exist. The film ends with quotes from the two men, King's an eloquent condemnation of violence, Malcolm X's a righteous justification of violence as self-defense. Again, it seems, an action can be both wrong and right at once.

To me, Lee seems to be saying that any kind of polarized view of the world is a false one, any world where we're given only two choices a limited one, and the film is really calling for a more nuanced and understanding view of each other as individuals.

The second feature in our Criterion-does-racism double bill, WHITE DOG, is equally brilliant.

The film examines racism through the nature/nurture argument, and examines racism as something taught, through the brilliant metaphor (and unfortunately all-too-factual reality) of 'white dogs', animals that have been trained to attack black people. When a young actress comes across one of these animals, she tries to cure it of its racist tendencies with the help of a black trainer.

I don't want to spoil things, as few people will have seen this particular film, given it's limited release, but it verges into surprising, yet inevitable territory. It's a brilliant depiction of the differences between human and animal, of the violence at the heart of survival, and it gives us one of the most fascinating villains in cinematic history.

Both of these films stuck with me, long after they were finished. They took me back to that little boy, watching Johnnie Cochrane on that tiny television, sitting on the library floor, and how much larger the world has become since then.

30 DoC: 8 1/2 and Mel Brooks

2011-04-11T22:54:00.008-04:00

A while ago, I wrote about how you can connect RAGING BULL in one step to SPACE JAM (seriously). In that same entry, I also suggested that RAGING BULL might be the best-looking black-and-white film ever made.

I might have to eat crow on that one, because 8 1/2 is ridiculously gorgeous.

I'm not the world's biggest Fellini fan, but GODDAMN:

And all of these images take place within the first five minutes of the film!

8 1/2 is justifiably praised for its lush cinematography, its brilliant post-modern analysis of the filmmaker and the film, and for all of the things that make film profs feel tingly inside. Those are all valid reasons, and I love them too, but for me, it's the humour in 8 1/2 that truly sets it apart.

The cliche of older foreign films being sombre, highbrow examinations on death and misery gets shown the lie here: 8 1/2 is steeped in sex, jealousy, and lust, and it's often riotously funny while it does it. The "harem" dream scene is a mini-masterpiece within a masterpiece, lampooning male desire in a scene that wouldn't be too out of place in a Mel Brooks film.

Of course, comparing Brooks to Fellini is a little facetious of me, but not as much as it may seem. Brooks gets a dismissive shake from the the elitists as "the fart guy", and I'm sure there are those who would argue he is more closely linked to say, the Wayans, then Fellini, but his films are brilliant skewerings of racism, scientific rationality, and politics. I mean, he even shot a black-and-white film!

So Criterion, where's the Blu-ray of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN?

Kidding. Kind of. That'd be totally awesome, though.

VALENTINE'S DAY: By The Numbers

2011-04-01T14:06:00.006-04:00

I once jokingly referred to VALENTINE'S DAY as the Remembrance Day of movies.

I had no idea how right I was.

I worked in a movie theatre during VALENTINE'S DAY's theatrical release, and on the day in question, a huge fight broke out between two ladies over a seat dispute. There was name-calling and hair-pulling, and an eventual escorting of people from the theatre. Ever since then, I've been intrigued to discover if VALENTINE'S DAY had the sort of power that could compel two rational people to fight over a seat.

Well, those people were just idiots. This is a miserable excuse of a movie, all the ideas stolen from other, better films. So in the spirit of the script of VALENTINE'S DAY, allow me to break down the film by the numbers, Erin Brockovich style!

-1
the number of times I would watch VALENTINE'S DAY again.

0
the number of lines Ashton Kutcher is able to deliver with emotional sincerity.

1
the number of times VALENTINE'S DAY surprised me.

2 for 1
the deal the production seemed to score on Roberts actresses.

4
the number of times I considered just watching LOVE, ACTUALLY instead.

8
the number of times the words "I hate Valentine's Day" are spoken or written in the film. At least. But wait - how many times are the actors actually saying "I hate VALENTINE'S DAY"? These are the questions your brain ponders to help you make it through the film.

10
the number of years that the Taylors, Mr. Lautner and Ms. Swift, should be sentenced to some sort of acting prison for their incredibly irritating performances. Each.

90
the number of minutes I thought this film would last.

122
the actual excruciating number of minutes this film lasted.

I SAW THE DEVIL And It's Really Lame

2011-03-31T22:51:00.008-04:00

This is an apology.

I've only ever walked out of one movie in my lifetime, and it happened when I was eleven years old. One summer day in 1997, my pre-pubescent mind just couldn't handle the ridiculous kangaroo-samurai of WARRIORS OF VIRTUE, and refused to tolerate it for one more minute. I headed to the lobby to eat my peanut butter cups in peace and wait for my dad and brother. This seemingly simple act had two complex, long-lasting effects on my impressionable young mind: one, witnessing the magic of slacker movie theatre employees shoot the shit about movies while all the theatres were in and they had nothing to do can probably be directly correlated to my working in movie theatres for the better part of a decade; and two, in the days and months to come, I began to suspect that maybe I had missed ... something ... by walking out of WARRIORS OF VIRTUE, something ill-defined but valuable, and I resolved to never walk out of a film again (a later viewing of the specific film in question during my twenties did nothing to definitively prove this notion, at least as it relates to the kangaroo-samurai genre).

Of course, I've come close to walking out of films since then: I've written about my disdain for Clint Eastwood's GRAN TURINO before, one of my favourite whipping-boys, and there have been some truly regrettable experiences that refuse to leave my cinematic memory, from KICKIN' IT OLD SKOOL to ACROSS THE UNIVERSE. On the search for new, exciting films, you're bound to find a few that don't speak to you. That's just part of the gamble. I suffer through these films with a certain begrudging acceptance, in a sort of unspoken pact with the movie gods that this is just the way it goes, sometimes.

But when I see a film like I SAW THE DEVIL (AKMAREUL BOATDA), I get angry.

I bemoan films like GRAN TURINO or ACROSS THE UNIVERSE because of the tremendous amount of skill and talent that went into making these films, all in service of hackneyed ideas (as opposed to a work like KICKIN' IT OLD SKOOL, which is just a cinematic abortion from frame one). I SAW THE DEVIL firmly belongs to this category. It's a tremendously polished and affecting film, plunging you into an incredibly disturbing serial rapist/killer story and never really letting you go.

"Harrowing" is an overused word, especially in film. Splashing any word on the cover of K-19: THE WIDOWMAKER will rob that word, whatever that word is, of some of its power. But I SAW THE DEVIL is harrowing in the true sense of the word. It's beyond hard to watch, its violence graphic and sudden, shocking even to jaded viewers. It got underneath my skin, and such power has to be commended. If visceral reaction was the only merit on which we judged film, I would applaud I SAW THE DEVIL and urge you all to see it.

But viscera is not the only criteria on which we should judge film. Film should serve a higher purpose than that. I SAW THE DEVIL does nothing with its incredible power. It is more than content to play out a seemingly never-ending string of horrifying scenes in front of you, then make a half-hearted, cynical attempt to make this a story about how becoming a monster to stop a monster will ruin more lives than it brings justice to. If memory serves, no less than three characters have a line to that exact effect, using a sledgehammer to drive home thematic ideas when it's been using a scalpel for everything else. It's a film that gives the viewer tremendous credit, except when it comes to the big stuff. It's bereft of ideas, or at least ideas beyond a higher plane of cool and or bloodcurdling ways to kill people.

I'm not going to pretend that my criticism of this film isn't rooted in moral outrage. This film offended me. I'm not against displaying the horrors that humanity is capable of, but there has to be a reason for putting those things on display for me. It's the reason I have a problem with the bulk of the horror genre, or at least the sections of it that isn't straight-out exploitative outrageousness (PIRANHA 3D) or has larger social implications (FRAILTY, THE THING). The director of I SAW THE DEVIL, Jee-woon Kim, previously made THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE WEIRD, a film that I loved, so maybe I'm not seeing something. Feel free to open my eyes with comments below.

When the film was finally over (I think even the most strident fan of this film would have to admit that you don't need 147 minutes to tell this story), I was getting up to leave and overheard the man in front of me mention something about how great the film was. It was a viewpoint I couldn't understand, had no sympathy for nor had an interest in exploring, and I left the theatre and went home without saying so much as "goodbye" to the friends I had come to the theatre with.

So to those friends, sorry I left without talking to you. It was the closest I could get to walking out on the movie. Why don't you come over one night and we'll watch WARRIORS OF VIRTUE together?

THE WOLFMAN Should Have Been Called JOE JOHNSTON'S MARK ROMANEK'S FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA'S THE WOLFMAN. But I Get That That's A Bit Unwieldy.

2011-03-28T21:20:00.015-04:00

The recent Benicio del Toro remake of THE WOLFMAN has one of the more interesting production histories in recent years, with director Mark Romanek bailing just three weeks before the shooting was to begin and Joe Johnston (of JUMANJI and THE ROCKETEER fame, and the forthcoming CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER) stepping into his shoes at the almost-last minute. Romanek left over the always dependable "creative differences", but things seem to have worked out well for him, as he went on to make NEVER LET ME GO, one of the finest films of last year. How did THE WOLFMAN fare?

Not so well. Perhaps predictably, this movie is a mess, a mishmash of ideas and styles that never forms into a cohesive whole. What is more surprising is the blatant stylistic lifts from Francis Ford Coppola's BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, which might be the only film in history to possibly have more apostrophes than words in the actual title. I'm sure Johnston had minimal time to prep his version of THE WOLFMAN, but everything from the sped-up wolf-vision camera, to his use of long, creeping shadows, to the secret garden labyrinths, is a direct lift from Coppola's film.

So with so many similarities, let's explore some of the reasons why THE WOLFMAN falls so short of it's stylistic predecessor:

Anthony Hopkins is no Anthony Hopkins

The clearest link between the two films, aside from their gothic monster-movie origins, is the presence of veteran actor Anthony Hopkins. Unfortunately, THE WOLFMAN doesn't have the right Anthony Hopkins: it has THE RITE Anthony Hopkins, a decrepit shadow of his former self. Hopkins has been typecast as Hollywood's go-to creepy old guy ever since SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, and he seems remarkably fine with it. Occasionally he'll turn out a THE FASTEST INDIAN or something, but I kind of picture him sitting in some sort of spiky black tower, cackling to his orc henchmen as royalty checks for RED DRAGON and FRACTURE pour in.

Here, he's doing nothing new, occasionally lifting an eyebrow or smiling enigmatically, and you get a glimpse of the mischievous actor peeking out underneath the fatigue of playing the same role over and over. They're fleeting moments, though, few and far in between. In DRACULA, his Van Helsing is a fascinating enigma, a presence that constantly demands your attention. Where has his fire gone?

Emily Blunt is no Winona Ryder

Somehow, I've made it through my entire adult life without someone forcing me to watch THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA, so I first saw Emily Blunt in SUNSHINE CLEANING. To my mind, she's never been better. Every role I've seen her in since has been an excuse to look sort of sullenly off camera and be delicately vulnerable. Her character is severely underwritten in THE WOLFMAN, but she doesn't add anything to it, either.

Look at that picture: Winona's gonna mess you up. Emily's auditioning for a role in THE VILLAGE 2: CRAZIER WHITER PEOPLE. There's no comparison.

This Gollum-Thing is no Monica Bellucci

Monica Bellucci rising up between your legs as some sort of busty succubus vampiress? That's scary hot. Smeagol doing the same thing? That's neither.

And neither is this movie.

30 Days of Criterion: 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER, SUCKER PUNCH, and the Narrative

2011-03-26T13:38:00.015-04:00

Around these parts, I try to approach films like SPIDER-MAN 2 or OCTOPUSSY with the level of theoretical criticism we usually devote to the Fellinis and Truffauts of the film world. This is often good for a laugh or two, while simultaneously helping me make the sort-of central argument of this blog that films that function as pure entertainment (i.e. the ouevre of Tony Scott) have as much merit as their upper-brow cousins.

However, this leaves me in a bit of a bind when it comes to talking about art films. It's hard to elevate street dancing without feeling like you have to tear down the ballet, at least a little bit, in order to level the playing field. This approach would be totally insincere, though, for as much as I love the schlock of Hollywood, I have a tremendous affinity for the pretension of dark and mysterious foreign women, black-and-white photography, and the idea that subtitles are fun.

This leads me to the Criterion Collection. These magnificent bastards have been separating me from my money for years now, trading in on my obsessive-compulsive DVD habits and love of everything from M to Z to THE ROCK. Recently, Criterion had a 50% off sale on everything in their online store, and the next thing I was aware of was the incredible lightness of my wallet. The package arrived the other day, and it was most imposing:

I know what you're thinking, and yes, that is ARMAGEDDON, fourth from the left. It fills me with joy to think that over the next few days, I'll jump from Akira Kurosawa to Luis Bunuel to Michael Bay. So without further ado, let's dive in to 30 DAYS OF CRITERION, with Jean-Luc Godard's 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER.

Now, after professing all this love for foreign cinema, I have to admit that I find 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER a frustrating film. It's an essay film that veers into seemingly-unrelated tangents for long sections, and is full of extended rants at societal hypocrisy that sound like they were lifted from a second-year university paper. There are also moments where women stare pensively off camera and say things like, "Language is the house man lives in," and you're struck by the incredible French-ness of the film, something that time has brought closer to parody than anything approaching insight.

But for all of these moments, there are scenes of incredible innovation that still have an exciting sense of newness, like the coffee scene, where a close-up on a swirling cup of coffee comes to represent "the primordial ooze" of humanity's evolution (no CGI dinosaurs here, Malick, just a cup of coffee), or the scene where a young boy describes the origins of sexual violence before staring deep into the lens and shooting a toy gun right into the camera, or the scene where two prostitutes are paid to walk around with airline bags over their heads, simultaneously sexualized and dehumanized in an eerie portrayal of identity and choice.

My main frustration with the film comes from the vague narrative that frames 2 OR 3 THINGS I KNOW ABOUT HER, a device that, to me, seems to detract rather than support the essay. "Her" takes on many meanings in the film, and this distillation of the human element into a larger sociological argument slices two ways. I start the film wanting to know more about the character, Juliette, but am instead treated to an analysis of Paris as "her"; as soon as I start getting into that, we're back to Juliette, or Marina Vlady, the actress who plays her; or one of a dozen other women who play supporting "cubist" roles. The essay just moves too fast for me, and the narrative conceit makes me switch into different modes of watching the film.

Here's where we bring it all back to the intro - if you came here for a few words about Godard, you should probably just stop here, before I piss you off by comparing the master of the French New Wave with Zack Snyder and his most recent effort, SUCKER PUNCH.

Still with me? Don't say I didn't warn you. On the surface, these two films could not be less similar: Godard's analytic essay film may as well be an entire medium, if not worlds, away from Snyder's pretty-girls-blow-up-robots-real-good-while-Nine-Inch-Nails-pounds-in-the-background wet dream of an action film.

But both films are remarkably concerned with narrative, even while their ultimate goals are completely separate from that idea. SUCKER PUNCH aims to be nothing more than eye candy, a never-ending parade of "Holy shit, did you see that giant robot samurai?" "Yes I did, did you see the goddamned fire-breathing dragon?"-type moments that need only the barest of narrative concepts to be expressed. However, we still get the inciting incident, the introductions to characters and environment, and an attempt to explain where these visuals are coming from, all doled out in what feels like an obligatory manner from Snyder. Of course, he makes these moments as visual as possible, drenching everything he can in rain, sweat, and grime, but it's clear that it's the rain, sweat, grime, and steampunk Nazi zeppelins that he's really interested in. It leads to some beautiful images, and I don't even really have a problem with favouring the stylistic over substantive, if that's what you want to do, but why even bother with the narrative at that point? Why not just make the entire film the never-ending steampunk-Nazi-zombies/katana-wielding-robo-samurai visual porn Snyder wants it to be?

The truth is that in both of these films, the narratives are just a handhold, something for the audience to hang on to while Jean-Luc's playing in the conceptual sandbox, or Zack's making some pretty pictures. It serves as an anchor, assuring us that there is meaning to be had from all this.

I'm pretty sure they would hate each other.

In Praise of Guy Pearce (Let's Have A Toast For The Assholes)

2011-03-22T18:03:00.011-04:00

Did you realize that Guy Pearce is in THE KING'S SPEECH?

I certainly didn't. When I finally got around to seeing The Best Movie of the Year last week, the veteran English actor's presence was the most surprising thing in it. I had heard all about noble "king Colin", expected Geoffrey Rush to kill it as he always does, and was eagerly looking forward to seeing Ms. Bonham Carter trying to fit her crazy hair into period-authentic demure hats, but I had no advance word about Mr. Pearce.

Which is a shame, because if I had known that he was in THE KING'S SPEECH, I would have been far more excited to see it. I think he's one of the most interesting character actors we've had in recent years, from his star-making turn in L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, to his Count Mondego in THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, to his most-recognized work, MEMENTO. All of these roles, even his protagonists, have a similarity: they're all assholes.

But not straight-up assholes. Pearce brings an interesting quality to these dicks; they're all principled dicks. His character in L.A. CONFIDENTIAL might be an overly ambitious, sexually loathsome little prick, but he's an overly ambitious, sexually loathsome little prick that genuinely wants to solve the case and find out the truth. MEMENTO's Leonard is as convoluted and twisted a character as the film's narrative; you're constantly judging what you believe about what he believes, but at the root, his quest for vengeance is entirely sympathetic (at least if we believe what he believes). Vengeance and justice are at the heart of THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO, where his Mondego simply takes what he thinks should rightly be his, but comes out on the wrong side of class struggle.

He's playing an interesting mirror to the Count in THE KING'S SPEECH, once again a man of nobility, but this time at odds with the values of his class. Inasmuch as the film has a villain, he is it, but once again his villainy is based in principle, which makes him a much more interesting antagonist. He never does anything particularly reprehensible (as long as we ignore that hint of Nazi sympathies), and in fact, his position on love could easily make him the romantic hero of a different story.

As I wrote this, and realized just how much I like Mr. Pearce as an actor, I started wondering why he isn't in more films. Taking a quick look at his IMDb page, it's clear where the break occurred: the ill-fated remake of Jules Verne's THE TIME MACHINE. I briefly considered re-watching it, but there's limits to what I'm prepared to expose myself to for the betterment of a blog entry.

So, Mr. Pearce: stick to the interesting assholes.

The Lord of the Rings + Puns = Instawesomemes

2011-03-19T10:00:00.006-04:00

In case anyone read yesterday's post and thought, "Brandon seems a little harsh on one of the greatest film series ever made," allow me to reassure you that I am still your friendly neighbourhood geek. These should help re-establish my nerd cred:

Why Gandalf Is A Dick, And What It Means About The Cold War

2011-03-18T14:42:00.019-04:00

I recently spent some time in rural England, and walking around the endlessly lush countryside of that nation, you can't help but feel some of the magic of it's rich history. Every coastal area has an abandoned World War Two-era radar station, and you can faintly see the outlines of the kings and tribal warlords of the past, leading armies over the dales. It's more than just the stuff of history books, though; you occasionally top the crest of a hill and feel an Arthurian presence, a sense that you're connected to the legends and myths of the past, a feeling of reaching through time.

So of course, as soon as I got home, I threw on THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

Twelve hours later, I started thinking about something that I had never really taken notice of before: the fact that Gandalf is a huge dick.

There are elements of Gandalf's dickish behaviour as early as "The Fellowship of the Ring", where he gets off on withholding the joy of fireworks from little children, or mocking Bilbo's lame smoke rings, or in his constant berating of Pippin, but his full douchebaggery only really reveals itself with his transformation to Gandalf the White, in "The Two Towers".

That's when his reincarnated ass shows up, does a little Saruman impression just to fuck around with his best friends, mutters a bunch of alarming shit like "the veiling shadow that glowers in the East takes shape", proceeds to do nothing to stop humanity from entering a giant trap, and then takes off just as the single most important battle in the world is about to begin, abandoning the task of protecting the world of men to twelve year-old boys.

Now, technically, he's going out to gather reinforcements, to bring back the banished horsemen of Eomer, but really, why does he have to go? Why can't one of those twelve year-olds run out on horseback and bring them back? "Oh, Gandalf has Shadowfax, the Lord of Horses," I hear you saying. "Only he could go get the Rohirrim and bring them back in time to save Helm's Deep." No. No. That's bullshit. If Shadowfax is the Lord of Horses, and can both understand humans and communicate with other horses, why can't Shadowfax just go get the goddamned Rohirrim? Hell, that way, we don't even have to spare the twelve year-old. He can help 'man' the gates. Meanwhile, Gandalf could be using his magic flashlight and/or one-time bubble shield powers to help defend humanity. But before hundreds of boy soldiers can even start to learn the subtleties of barracks humour, let alone the intricacies of swordplay, Mr. the White is off, on a mission that literally almost anyone else could do. I won't go so far as to call him a coward, but by leaving at the worst possible time, he's clearly a dick.

Okay, so what? What can we learn from Gandalf the Jerk? A surprising amount about the Cold War, I think.

Tolkien would decry those who look for historical parallels in his magnum opus, but just as surely as they were not intended, they could not be avoided. Every work is shaped by the time in which they are created, by the concerns of a society and the individual experiences of their authors, not to mention the interpretations of the audience.

So if post-WWII readers would read the descriptions of women huddling around their children in the Helm's Deep sequence of "The Two Towers" as echoes of the Blitz, or modern audiences see the film version of it as an echo of American civilians comforting each other on 9/11, or of innocent Iraqis surrounded by the bombing of Operation Iraqi Freedom, who's to say they're wrong? They're all valid interpretations.

So without talking about what Tolkien intended, how would a post-WWII Soviet reader see Gandalf's abandonment of the people of Rohan? That's mostly a hypothetical question, as the USSR banned the book from being published, seeing it as a "hidden allegory 'of the conflict between the individualist West and the totalitarian, Communist East'". So we know the censors saw at least some of themselves in Sauron, which is a psychologically interesting self-identification, but I think the Soviet people would have seen more of themselves in Rohan, a nation abandoned by all of its allies to face the wrath of their enemy, alone.

There are clear parallels between Stalingrad and Helm's Deep, and in this light, Gandalf's abandonment would carry Yalta-like repercussions, an act that the Soviets took as a betrayal and greatly furthered the animosity that would eventually lead to the Cold War, nuclear proliferation, and the closest this world has come to total annihilation. Thanks Gandalf, you absolute piece of shit.

Of course, in the book and film, Gandalf comes back with the Rohirrim (leaving it until the last second, of course) and helps save the day. In real life? Uh, not so much. The Allies left Russia to bleed the Germans while they carefully prepared for the Western front. In this light, then, "The Lord of the Rings" can be read as a sort of anti-Cold War parable about how the West ruined its chances to create a lasting peace. In fact, the later conflicts in "The Return of the King", where the men of Minas Tirith are saved by the very Rohirrim they did not come to the aid of in the earlier book, plays like a fantasy of how the post-war period could have evolved.

The word 'fantasy' is not to suggest that Tolkien was a naive idealist: "The Lord of the Rings" is full of descriptions of the corruptibility and weakness of humanity. But perhaps more than orcs and goblins, wizards and magic rings, the greater fantasy of Tolkien's is in the hope that humanity can put aside our ambitions for power and status in favour of peaceful co-operation. That would be greater in every sense of the word.

Now, if you'll excuse me, Gandalf is terrorizing an entire village, including women and children, with apocalyptic fireworks shaped as dragons. What a dick.

Let's Play The Blame Game

2011-03-16T20:03:00.017-04:00

BATTLE: L.A. is an atrocious movie.

Just how atrocious? Like a perfect storm of atrociousness. I haven't wanted to get out of a theatre this badly since Clint Eastwood's GRAN TURINO, and I almost ended friendships with people over that movie.

Unlike Clint's grumpy-man-learns-to-love senility exercise though, this is an alien invasion movie. Not only should I have been primed to love this, but even if it was sub-par, I should have at least been entertained. I mean, I'm the guy that watched James McTiegue's THE INVASION all the way through. Remember the $7.25 that made? That was me. Instead, halfway through BATTLE: L.A., I was wondering if I had literally seen every single moment of this movie before, in one form or another, and if a Mad Libs: Army book could have written a better script.

Playing the blame game with this stinking pile of shit is like having complaints about the Oscars: at some point, the well-deserved scorn reaches critical mass, and all you can do is sit back and wonder about the point of the entire process. So instead of bemoaning some of the most horrifyingly condescending ADR I've ever heard, or lamenting the sheer pointlessness of immediately dropping an audience into combat, only to pull them out and drown them in twenty minutes of expositional character scenes, I want to examine the whole point of playing the blame game. Where does disappointment come from, and why do we feel like meting out punishment for those that fail our expectations?

To examine this, allow me to lambast Ridley Scott's BLACK HAWK DOWN, a clear stylistic influence on BATTLE: L.A.

Ridley Scott doesn't get a fair shake around this blog, and I'm damn proud of that. Unlike his brother, Ridley aims for greatness, and while that may be admirable, it makes his failures that much larger. Such is the case with BLACK HAWK DOWN, an intriguing portrait of warfare that completely misses the point of the events it dramatizes. In fact, everything after the 30-minute mark might as well be labelled "Jerry Bruckheimer and the U.S. Army's BLACK HAWK DOWN" in that every U.S. soldier is a shining example of grounded moral fortitude.

Stephen Gaghan, the writer of TRAFFIC and the criminally underrated (and underseen) SYRIANA, tells a great story about being brought in to pitch his take on the events in Somalia to Scott and Bruckheimer. Essentially, Gaghan wanted to end the film on the image of hundreds of dead Somalians wrapped in food shipment sheets, reused as body bags, that had been branded with the stamp "Gift of the U.S.A.". Needless to say, that idea didn't really float Jerry's boat, and the resulting film decides to skirt around the questionable ethics of the situation in favour of celebrating the noble fraternity of the U.S. military (which, God knows, we haven't had enough films about yet). The entire film is a compromise, wherein Ridley gets to play with all of Uncle Sam's nice helicopters, as long as he doesn't say anything too mean about what they do. In an unrelated story, Stephen Gaghan hasn't been able to get a film off the ground for the last six years.

The disappointment I have for BLACK HAWK DOWN is rooted in the fact that it never achieves what it can be, or perhaps more accurately, what I want it to be. There's potential for great drama in the situation, but the film minimizes it and focuses on something we've seen hundreds of times before. BATTLE L.A. has the exact same problem: it doesn't only imitate the visual style of BLACK HAWK DOWN, but the thematic interests as well. I know it's unfair to compare the very real horrors of Mogadishu with an alien invasion used as entertainment; but as far as the filmmakers are concerned, these are both background issues, less important in themselves than how they affect the main characters. So instead of delving into the alien invasion, we get to see Aaron Eckhart telling kids to "be my little Marine", or Michelle Rodriguez sneer her way through another Michelle Rodriguez performance. The problem is that we didn't come to see a movie about a platoon of soldiers: we came to see an alien invasion movie. We don't care about any of these people, and it doesn't help that they're all walking stereotypes that never create a real connection with the audience. They don't connect to a reality, especially not the reality we expected to see.

So if disappointment, at least in this case, springs from not reflecting a reality we expect, what does that tell us about playing the blame game? We traditionally use blame to place the responsibility for failure at the feet of a few select people: for example, Jerry Bruckheimer can be blamed for making BLACK HAWK DOWN a jingoistic ode to the American serviceman, and Ridley Scott can be blamed for bowing to the Army and Mr. Bruckheimer's interests in bringing their vision to the screen. It's comforting to think that somewhere out there, in some alternate universe, there's a version of BLACK HAWK DOWN that didn't involve these two people, and presents a more accurate and responsible picture of the events in Somalia in 1993. It's comforting because the alternative is that the entire system is at fault. BLACK HAWK DOWN was destined to be what it is, and no one could have made it any better than it is, not even Ridley's brother.

Interestingly, I also saw THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU the other day, a film which has similar questions of fate at heart, then decides, that's interesting and all, but what if Matt Damon has to use the forces of destiny to stop a wedding? I suppose I should be grateful; at least he didn't have to stop Emily Blunt from getting on a plane. THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU is merely a bad movie, though, not a train wreck that just keeps happening, like some sort of Leslie Nielsen-tinged nightmare, and it feels easy to blame writer/director George Nolfi or studio brass for attempting to shoehorn a traditional romance into a existential sci-fi. There are only three or four choices that ruin the film for me, and make it unrealistic, either logically or emotionally.

When you look at the sheer vastness of the number of horrible decisions involved in almost every aspect of BATTLE: L.A., though, what else can you do but assume that the entire system is irreparably screwed up? We're just going to have to accept that horrible, horrible films will continue to get made until the day we die. Some of us will even pay $7.25 for them.

Now who should I blame for that?

Seriously, If You Can't Enjoy APOLLO 13, Fuck You

2011-03-11T16:09:00.015-05:00

I'm just going to come out and say it: every child in the world should be shown APOLLO 13, and if they don't like it, we should just fucking execute them. Humanity will be better off.

Let me assure you that I am being incredibly sincere here. Irony's dominance in modern society can be informative and rewarding, but all to often it is stifling, a time-wasting, ephemeral amusement that neither betters nor develops us. APOLLO 13 is the antithesis of this, one of the most sincere films of all time, and if the children of the future can't turn off their post-modern auto-irony-wired brains for two hours and enjoy it, they should probably just do us all a favour and stop breathing.

Sure, we all like to smirk smugly at the ignorance and stupidity of the world, but APOLLO 13 steadfastly refuses to acknowledge the worst in us, and glories in humanity's ambition. It's one of the noblest Hollywood films ever made, basking in the value of life, friendship, and the interconnectedness of us all.

Ron Howard gets a bad rap, sometimes deservedly (THE DILEMMA, HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS) and sometimes not (BACKDRAFT, FROST/NIXON), but I don't think anyone can question that APOLLO 13 is his greatest film. When we criticize his work, we're quick to deride him as "Opie", and this criticism is rooted in the irony/sincerity problem. Howard's work is usually rooted in a deep belief in the basic goodness of people and, indeed, the universe. When this attitude is played too prominently, it takes on an "aw, shucks" naivete that we can't help but mock, but when played at an appropriately quiet background level, it feels inspirational and moving. You can't help but tear up when those parachutes deploy at the end of the film.

A large part of the film's effect is James Horner's masterful score, surely one of the greatest in cinematic history. Sweeping moments of triumph punctuate the overriding tension, like the angels of our better nature piercing through the uncertainty of life. It's undeniably memorable, and incredibly uplifting.

However, the key to the film is Hollywood's go-to sincerity man, Tom Hanks. Hanks carries the film with a straightforward earnestness that has been his career trademark. From BIG onwards, Hanks made his mark as the innocent, affable protagonist, which made him particularly appealing in romantic comedies. Here though, his sincerity is played underneath that of the skilled, no-nonsense astronaut, and it's this subrosa approach that makes Lovell so relatable, and in a larger sense, the whole movie so effective. Its emotional sincerity is masked by the more pressing issue of survival.

It is also the best film ever made that understands the sheer awesomeness of space travel. 2001 undoubtedly has cool space stuff, but its dour, philosophical tone robs it of the wizardry of the process. Some of the greatest shots in APOLLO 13 revolve around the characters simply playing with zero-gravity, and you can't help but feel in awe of the entire idea of space travel. Now, I don't know if the children of the future will have any idea what space travel is, other than as words in the solitary history book their entire classroom is forced to share (if they're even teaching history at that point, that is), but that's when we should pop out the APOLLO 13 digital file, disc, or VHS tape and let them just bask in the sheer greatness of mankind.

And if they don't like it, let's just shoot them in the back of the head.

Let's All Jump On The "George Lazenby Was OK" Bandwagon

2011-03-08T17:10:00.011-05:00

The title of this entry is not meant to indicate that ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE is a flawless film. But ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE is reviled with such passion by its detractors that those of us who kind of like it feel compelled to say a few words in its defence. This compulsion is made even stronger in my case, for one simple reason: I used to hate ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE.

This wasn't a Marion Ravenwood-Indiana Jones hate. My strong feelings weren't just a mask for an actual deep-seated love. It wasn't that kind of hate. I truly, truly hated this film. I found the story dull and uninvolving, the ending tacked-on and reeking of desperation, and I bemoaned the un-Sean Connery-ness of George Lazenby.

This, I think, is the critical complaint at the heart of our problems with Mr. Lazenby's lone portrayal of 007; not that he wasn't Sean Connery, but that he lacked a Connery-ness. This is actually less of a sleight on Lazenby than a criticism on the tone of the film. To put it simply, ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE was trying to do something different, and we didn't like it. Not one bit.

OHMSS (as it will be henceforth called) came on the heels of the three most successful Bond films in history: YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE (1967), THUNDERBALL (1965), and GOLDFINGER (1964). These films all follow the same general formula, in that Bond fights off a massive international conspiracy by seducing gorgeous women and eventually calling in the cavalry (Army, Navy, or ninjas). They're big-budget travelogues, and have a terrific fondness for technological gadgets (cars with ejector seats, jetpacks, and planes that come in four suitcases and are assembled by a team of white-suited technicians). If you're asked for the definitive Bond film, odds are you'll pick one of these. They capture the childhood imagination and root of the Bond phenomenon in ways that few have matched.

When Connery walked away from the franchise after YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE, the Bond producers felt they had to switch up the tone of the series as well. They brought in editor Peter Hunt to direct (a huge responsibility, given he'd never directed a film before) and approved a script that bore little resemblance to their last three efforts. Gone are the hollowed-out volcanoes and death-by-shark scenes, the seductive femme fatales and the cars with machine guns behind the headlights. In fact, the film OHMSS most resembles is FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE (1963), the second Bond film, which is often cited as one of the best spy films ever made (if not necessarily the best Bond film ever). Bond is vengeful, obsessive, and shows a contempt for authority unheard of in the call-in-the-marines days. The story, while still dealing with a megalomaniac holding the world hostage, is actually remarkably small in scale and is essentially an interpersonal story between Bond and his bride-to-be. It's notable that Bond's famous gadgets are nowhere to be seen, and Q's only scene in the film takes place at the end, where it feels like Peter Hunt has just discovered Desmond Llewelyn in a closet and rushed him to set in a bid to once again remind people that yes, this is a James Bond film.

The phrase "familiarity breeds contempt" has always struck me as half-true, and I think OHMSS is a perfect example of how this idea separates an audience from the filmmakers. The Bond team had spent six years creating very similar entertainment, and picked this moment, the departure of Connery, to radically change not only the star but the tone of their product. By contrast, audiences had experienced only six hours of sex, sun, and violence, and wanted more (bearing in mind, of course, that this was decades before home video). It reminds me of how Jerry Seinfeld expressed his reservations about acting in a movie: "You watch a movie, it's two hours; you're in a bad movie, it's two years. And that's if you're lucky!" (I hope it took considerably less than that to record the dialogue for BEE MOVIE, Jerry). For audiences in 1969, the Bond formula hadn't become familiar yet, and in this case, it wasn't familiarity, but false advertising, that bred contempt. Audiences felt like they hadn't got "a Bond movie".

Looking back on this film, with forty years' worth of ski chases and frogmen with spear guns, this exact same feeling lends OHMSS a uniqueness, and a new value. The story basically takes place on the fringe of government activity (and legality), making the story more personal and immediate to Bond, and the character of Tracey is one of the few '60s Bond girls with a personality that requires more than one sentence to describe (although it wouldn't take too many more than that). The fight scenes have a violence to them that Hunt's keen editorial eye has clearly crafted to maximum impact. And it is still the only Bond film where James Bond cries.

Not that the film is perfect; the fight scenes often use sped-up film, which has not aged well (in one particularly egregious scene, a fight on a beach, the waves seem to be coming in faster than the punches); Telly Savalas' accent and phallic handling of cigarettes is incredibly distracting; and the attempt to make Bond sympathetic to the counter-culture of the '60s come off as weak and half-hearted.

If you nodded vigorously to this last paragraph, but felt unsure about the rest of it, check out ON HER MAJESTY'S SECRET SERVICE again. You might be surprised at how interesting the film is, especially if, like me, you find yourself liking the exact things you remember loathing. Maybe it just depends on what you count as "familiar", and if you're feeling particularly contemptuous.

One thing's sure, though: this bandwagon is getting full.

Comprehending the Coens and TRUE GRIT

2011-03-05T12:03:00.012-05:00

One of my favourite things about watching a movie with a group of friends is sitting through the end credits, making fun of crew nicknames and seeing how many assistants Hollywood stars have. So it was in this spirit that, as the credits rolled on the Coens' remake of TRUE GRIT, and I began to reflect on what I felt about the movie, I noticed the improbable-sounding credit for "Buster Coen, Mr. Damon's Abs Double". As Iris DeMent's "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms" wailed to a merciful end (easily the worst end credits song since Kanye West's "Impossible", by the way), I realized that the Coens have officially stopped giving a fuck.

Now, the origin of this credit might seem to be a cute, familial nod to collaborative filmmaking, but it seems to me that it's more representative about what the Coens are about. Simply put, they make films for themselves, and no one else. Their admirable indie spirit is just as strong today as it was in the BLOOD SIMPLE days.

I would normally applaud such strength of conviction and vision, but in this case, I have a gripe. It seems like in their efforts to resist absorption into the mainstream Hollywood machine, Joel and Ethan have focused on creating increasingly nontraditional narratives, oddball fringe characters, and deliberately unsatisfying climaxes. In TRUE GRIT, they've gone one step further and made their characters as incomprehensible as possible.

I don't mean in terms of the murky human areas of motivation and desire; I mean that you have to strain to hear almost every single fucking word the characters are speaking. The Coens appear to have coached Jeff Bridges to mumble every word out of the corner of his mouth, around a cigarette when possible, and to consistently play with some level of drunken slurring. Hailee Steinfeld spits almost every line in a manner more resembling a semi-automatic rifle than a human being. They even cut Matt Damon's tongue and try to take out a tooth at one point, in an effort to drown his Texas drawl in a swirl of blood and enamel. I found myself wishing there were subtitles several times.

All of this seems puzzling, given the Coens' reputation for verbatim reads of their scripts, every word carefully placed and measured for effect. It's difficult to imagine the TRUE GRIT script filled with the contractions, mumbling, and elided consonants of the final product. It would be impossible to read, both like and completely unlike a transcription of BBMing between Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez (or at least what I imagine that transcription would look like).

In the light of "Buster Coen, Mr. Damon's Abs Double", though, this incomprehensibility could make a lot more sense. If the Coens are truly making films for themselves, than they probably don't care about transferring their words to us in a clear, unambiguous way. You can't understand what he's saying? SCREW YOU, WE MADE "FARGO"! This also makes sense of the biggest question inherent to TRUE GRIT: namely, why remake TRUE GRIT? Because the Coens wanted to. You see how this works?

Of course, this theory could be completely wrong. I might have just seen TRUE GRIT in a theatre with bad speakers, and blown this whole thing out of proportion. I reserve the right to completely erase this article if I see it with headphones and can make out what's going on.

But I don't think that's going to happen. Bad speakers won't explain "Buster Coen, Mr. Damon's Abs Double".

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY Is The Cinematic Equivalent Of An iPad

2011-03-04T09:43:00.013-05:00

I'm a little confused about why we haven't been demanding a filmic version of THE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE.

Douglas Adams' 1980 book, the sequel to THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, is a delightful romp through the absurdities of space and time, and, at the risk of nerd heresy, might actually be better than its famous originator. To me, it's kind of the Jay-Z to HITCHHIKER's Jaz-O. Who's Jaz-O, you ask? Exactly.

I'm not confused about the lack of a sequel because the first film had compelling characters, whose ongoing adventures would make for rollicking entertainment. It clearly didn't. I'm not upset about seeing Sam Rockwell in movies without a shoddy CGI chin-head. I can watch MEN IN BLACK II if I really need to see something like that. It's not even that the story of the HITCHHIKER's movie felt incomplete. It's quite the opposite, in fact. A film of THE RESTAURANT AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE would be entirely superfluous, an unnecessary continuation on a product that no one particularly enjoyed the first time around.

This brings me to the iPad 2, and THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, the movie.

My confusion is rooted in the clear demand for one of these products, and the complete lack of interest in the other. It's clear that society wants derivative, unnecessary versions of what we've seen before (I'm looking at you, UNKNOWN, or as I like to call you, TAKEN 2: MORE TAKEN), so why can't Touchstone pony up another $50 million or so to send Mos Def back into space? I think it may have something to do with any one, and potentially some combination of, these three factors:

The Singing-Dolphins Paradigm
"So long, and thanks for all the fish" was a funny line in the original book. It is a considerably-less amusing three-minute song that opens the film. For some reason, the script for THHGTTG (which, to be fair, was written by Mr. Adams, a much smarter man than any of us) chooses to expand certain sections of the narrative while rushing through things like the destruction of the Earth and our introduction to major characters. It may be that Mr. Adams and Co. were functioning on a higher narrative level, but it ends up feeling like they don't trust us to pick up on the jokes.

The Zooey Deschanel Uncertainty Principle
This is a law of movie-making that any Zooey Deschanel performance rests on the razor's edge of quality. Will she make our hearts flutter like in 500 DAYS OF SUMMER, or stare dead-eyed into the camera, like in THE HAPPENING? There's simply no way to tell. Rumours that Werner Heisenberg's grandson is working on a formula to help determine this mystery of quantum movie-mechanics have only been answering by loud banging from Mr. Heisenberg's garage and the faint sound of sobbing.

The "Jesus Christ, I Just Saw 16 BLOCKS And Have No Interest In Seeing Mos Def Ever Again, Much Less Funding A Movie He Is In" Reaction
This one pretty much explains itself. Mos Def, the rapper? Awesome. Mos Def, the political activist? Charming, if perhaps a little naive. Mos Def, the anything-else? Uh, I've got a thing, so...

It could be some combination of these factors, but I think the real reason is that while THHGTTG, the object, looks very much like an iPad, the spirit of THHGTTG is anything but. It's cheekily subversive and original. And when we see something new conveyed to us through something derivative, we don't know what to do with it.

What I do know is that if we got each one of the 15 million people who bought an iPad to donate $3, we could send Mos Def back into space. And really, isn't that where he should be? At least until he promises not to do that 16 BLOCKS voice again?

The Most Ballin' Movie Ever

2011-02-27T15:15:00.015-05:00

This is not an article about the greatest movie ever made. I want that to be clear. The word 'best' will not be mentioned once. Well, maybe a few times. But not next to the word 'movie'. This isn't about the most involving screenplay, or the most revealing performance, or the most breathtaking cinematography.

This is about ballin'. Like a beast.

From Urban Dictionary:
ballin' like a BEAST!!!
submitted by j-rob mad fresh
to ball so hard that all the foos who say they ballers get banged out one punch by your awesomeness.

Word, J-Rob Mad Fresh, word.

So what film would best (damn it) define that description? Certainly not CITIZEN KANE. Well, maybe. But KANE seems to lack a certain swagger that ballin' implies. Ditto to GONE WITH THE WIND. GODFATHER PART II seems a little too reserved, scholarly, even, to take the title. BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN? Dude, don't be Uxbridge.

The most ballin' movie of all time is clearly THE SOUND OF MUSIC.

Yes, that THE SOUND OF MUSIC. Don't player-hate (please note the hyphen) because I'm chillin' like a bird. Have you ever seen THE SOUND OF MUSIC? Shit is like jetskis on water.

Okay, we've had enough fun with J-Rob Mad Fresh. But my point remains. There are many words one could choose to describe THE SOUND OF MUSIC, including 'delightful', 'heartwarming', and possibly even 'resonant', but all of these adjectives fail to describe just how badass this movie is. THE SOUND OF MUSIC is straight-up ballin' like a beast.

Now, I'm not sure J-Rob Mad Fresh would immediately approve of his phrase being bandied about like this. But let's examine the evidence. Most films that would aim at the coveted 'Most Ballin'' trophy could be separated into two categories: films that take on morality, and films that take on pure evil.

Take THE GODFATHER PART II, or HEAT, or FIGHT CLUB. These can all be put firmly into the "take on morality" category, and are great films, to be sure. They question our rights and responsibilities, delve into criminality, and question the ethics and values of our culture. They're often morally ambiguous and force you to think about your perspective on those issues. They're ballin' because they question the very essence of life.

On the other hand, you have films like INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, END OF DAYS, or 12 ANGRY MEN. These films are ballin' because they look evil in the eye and then punch that eye out through the back of evil's skull. They're often criticized by lovers of the first category as being morally simplistic or unrealistic, but if one accepts that there is such a thing as wrong, these films contain a courage just as ballin' as the former.

So, the question emerges: what's more ballin'? Playing chicken with the Devil, or the courage to defy God? The answer is, it doesn't matter, because THE SOUND OF MUSIC does both. Or, more accurately, Captain Von Trapp does.

I think when I say ballin', I'm talking about male role models. All of the films I've mentioned above contain strong male leads who bring an interesting package of masculine traits with them, whether it be Schwarzenegger's strength, DeNiro's codes of honour, or Henry Fonda's moral centre. But none of these guys have anything on Captain Von Trapp's package.

In THE SOUND OF MUSIC, the evil parallels are pretty obvious. There's no better cinematic equivalent for Evil than those pesky Nazis, and, oh boy, does THE SOUND OF MUSIC have some great Nazis. Like rapists, they roll into the virgin green hills of Austria with their red armbands and shiny black boots, then ask Von Trapp to help them or say goodbye to his lovely children. What does he do? Refuses every single one of their demands, kicks them in the shins and then, on his way out the door, gives them a song to remember him by. Take that, you nefarious evil-doers!

But Captain Von Trapp is no sycophantic worshiper at the altar of Good, though. Oh, no. No, he's more on the full-blown heretical side of things there. You see, he steals God's wife. Yeah, remember that whole thing about Maria being a nun? Von Trapp is like, "Fuck that. I'm going to steal this woman from Jesus, right after I tell Hitler to go screw himself, and then we're going to live happily ever after. I might even bang out six or seven more kids. Just try to stop me."

And that's why THE SOUND OF MUSIC is the most ballin' film of all time. Because Captain Von Trapp beats God and the Devil. Now that's ballin' like a beast. He also wears mad fresh sheep, too. J-Rob Mad Fresh would be proud. I know I am.

When Puns Go Wrong: OCTOPUSSY

2011-02-24T09:12:00.007-05:00

Dear Albert R. 'Cubby' Broccoli, U.S. Navy man, film producer, loving husband to three wives and devoted father of three children: I'm glad you're dead.

I mean, I'm happy that you created and produced the Bond films, but let's face it: towards the end there, you were really screwing the pooch.

It's you who bears the brunt of the blame for the horrifying excesses of MOONRAKER, for the increasingly ridiculous pairings of 50-year old Bonds and 20-year old actresses, and I have a feeling you're to blame for the ridiculous title of Roger Moore's sixth appearance as Bond, OCTOPUSSY.

Really? OCTOPUSSY? That's not even trying. You're the same guy that made YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE and LIVE AND LET DIE, great puns both. Of course, you had a little help from Ian Fleming there. But OCTOPUSSY? Why not just give in and call it YET ANOTHER JAMES BOND MOVIE WITH A FLACCID, DECREPIT PENIS SURROUNDED BY SURGICALLY ENHANCED BREASTS?

The Bond films are renowned for a juvenile, smirking attitude towards objectified women, with names like Pussy Galore and Plenty O'Toole looming large in cultural memory, but somehow, to me, Octopussy is offensive on a whole other level, and I think it's because 'Cubby' Broccoli was trying to give women a greater role in the Bond films.

That sounds incredibly sexist. What I mean is, he was trying, and failing miserably. Mr. Broccoli was a product of an earlier, man's-world culture, and the need to update the Bond films to reflect a more inclusive view of sexual politics was simply a job he was not designed for. Starting with 1981's FOR YOUR EYES ONLY, the film preceding OCTOPUSSY, there is a dedicated effort to make women more capable and resistant to Bond's charms, and Bond accordingly more monogamous and respectful (this on the heels of the cringe-inducing "a female doctor?" and "women drivers!" comments of the '70s). However, creating capable, professional women seems like it was antithetical to 'sexy' for Mr. Broccoli and the writers and directors of the '80s Bond films. Often, they settle for one or the other.

Bearing this in mind, the character of Octopussy actually plays an incredibly minor role in the film that bears her name. She's basically a middle man (if you'll excuse the gender-specific phrase), negotiating between the far more sinister villains of General Orlov and Kamal Khan, and eventually is persuaded (sexually, of course) into helping Bond dispose of them. She's kind of insignificant in the grand scheme of things. Naming this film OCTOPUSSY is like calling GOLDFINGER "PUSSY GALORE", in that Ms. Galore shares not only as outrageous a name as Octopussy, but also, a similar role: namely, to be sexually conquered by Bond and made to see the error of her ways, presumably on her way to the kitchen to make James a sandwich.

This often happens to the rarest of character types of the Bond films: that of the independent, financially successful woman. There are usually lesbianic overtones to their independence, their sources of income are often due to the result of some sort of illegal activity, and Bond always forces them away from their success (and vague homosexuality) with his magical transformative dick. Pussy Galore and Jill Valentine are examples of this type from the earlier films, and Octopussy is essentially the same stereotype, just veneered with a gloss of greater importance and an '80s hairdo. The early tagline, "No one does him better" is trying to be as liberating as it is enslaved to the ideology of the past.

Calling the film OCTOPUSSY may have been some sort of token gesture to women viewers, but it simultaneously takes the legs out from underneath that gesture by winking self-consciously at the terrible pun, not to mention the actual limitations of the character. It misses the whole point. In the final analysis, it doesn't indicate any kind of better place for women in the Bond franchise, but is merely the soul of a ten-year old boy giggling at the word "pussy". I'm not sure that'll bring back the female audience, Mr. Broccoli.

I actually enjoy large sections of OCTOPUSSY, specifically the post-titles sequence, wherein a clown-disguised 009 is pursued by a pair of knife-throwing twins and staggers into a diplomatic reception, red nose and all, before dropping a counterfeit Faberge egg at the feet of a shocked ambassador and dying. It's an incredible beginning to a great spy story. There are also some admirable attempts at creating relatively down-to-earth plots and villains, as well as some interesting looks at the Cold War culture. The whole thing is starting to feel the inertia of the Roger Moore era, though, and there's a definite feeling of going through the motions that carries over into A VIEW TO A KILL, in what would blessedly be Moore's final appearance as 007.

'Cubby' Broccoli would go on to make three more Bond films after OCTOPUSSY, almost all of which tried to reinvent Bond and the idea of the "Bond girl". He died during the production of GOLDENEYE, the film that finally brought Bond into the twentieth century. Mr. Broccoli's daughter, Barbara, took over her father's responsibility as the producer of the Bond films. Now, how long will it take for a Bond film to be directed by a woman?

Fetishizing the Past: History, Nostalgia and the Mad (Anchor)Men

2011-02-21T10:29:00.027-05:00

I've been catching up on my television watching as of late, and one of the shows I'm finally giving a chance is AMC's "Mad Men". I know, I know. I'm pretty late to the party. But there's a good reason for that.

Every time I would hear about "Mad Men", I'd ask what it was about, and the response would inevitably come back with some variation on, "It's about the sixties ... and smoking ... and sexually harassing women ... and looking awesome in a suit." Well, I would think to myself, I would rather watch THE WIRE eight hundred times in a row than watch that. Then I'd sit back in a smug, self-satisfied way, and convince myself that THE WIRE is the finest piece of American television ever made. Which, to be absolutely clear here, it is.

However, "Mad Men" wouldn't go away. More and more people were talking about it. I started hearing things that intrigued me, like the main character not being who he said he was. I saw a picture of Christina Hendricks and unconsciously did a "Mary Steenburgen in Back to the Future III" impression: golly! And then I heard about the storyline tying into events like the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Now, I haven't got there yet, having only reached episode six of the first season, but this is what truly excites me about this show (or at least this show's potential): I'm a history nerd. I will confess to owning THIRTEEN DAYS. I bought Soderbergh's CHE films, sight unseen. Hell, I own AND STARRING PANCHO VILLA AS HIMSELF, a made-for-HBO movie I had to write an essay on for a history elective and ending up buying because I thought it was so swell. I mean, Antonio Banderas as the legendary Mexican revolutionary? Colm Feore as D.W. Griffiths? Amazing!

I realize few people would echo those exact sentiments (for example, I feel like laughter at Mr. Banderas' casting would be a more common reaction), but I think many people have the same general response to period pieces: a fascination with the past. How else would you explain the enduring popularity of "Mad Men" in spite of the show's lackadaisical pacing?

BAM! Complisulted!

I kid. I haven't watched enough of "Mad Men" to really make an informed judgment yet, but I will say that the first six episodes of HBO's period-piece-response "Boardwalk Empire" has me far more interested in its sprawling story and compelling characters. So far, "Mad Men" is less about any of those things than it is about the fetishization of period details: stainless cigarette lighters, crisply ironed white dress shirts, and the smooth curved lines of bourbon glasses. It's no coincidence that the beautiful DVD packaging of the show features these objects, instead of the characters. At this point, the "smoking... sexual harassment...suits" criticism is bang-on. Not to say that it can't become more, but six episodes in, that is what "Mad Men" is about.

My apologies to everyone who told me that and saw me roll my eyes. You were right.

However, when I watched ANCHORMAN: THE LEGEND OF RON BURGUNDY yesterday, I started wondering where this reverence for the past comes from.

ANCHORMAN and "Mad Men" may not seem the most compatible of entertainments, but once you get past their tonal qualities, they do share a great deal of similarities. In fact, "smoking, sexual harassment, suits" might as well be Ron Burgundy's personal motto. The only noticeable difference between him and Don Draper is the horrifying moustache.

The similarities go beyond the protagonists, though. There is a sense of deep-rooted affection for the entire world that goes beyond a love of character or place: both of these works are in love with the past itself. Of course, the tone in ANCHORMAN is a much more comedic look at the excesses and political incorrectness of the 1970s, but there is a warmth to the innocence of the era that permeates the film.

I guess the word that most defines what we're talking about is nostalgia, and what makes these works so relatable is that everyone experiences nostalgia. It's not so much the specifics of the memory, but the feeling that the act of remembering something evokes. So while none of us (I assume) worked in the advertising agencies of '60s America, or have ever seen a news broadcast from the '70s, we can relate to it, because it feels like we're remembering it (even though we've never actually experienced anything like it).

But why would we want to do this? Why would we want to relive things we haven't lived through in the first place? I think the issue at the heart of nostalgia is that we know how fragile (and important) history is. History is how we construct narratives in every facet of our lives, and without narratives, it's exponentially more difficult to arrive at a truth. Just ask that crazed genius, David Lynch.

BAM! Complisulted!

I kid. But I do think that the reason Mr. Lynch has never dabbled in the historical film genre may be that he's not interested in cinematic meaning deriving from narrative, but rather from mood and emotive qualities. However, on both a personal and societal level, we're constantly examining why we got where we are and how we got there, forming narratives to help us understand. Therefore, memory, both personal and cultural, is one of our most cherished possessions.

And that's why we fetishize the horrifying moustaches and gleaming cigarette lighters of our past: they all tell us something about who we were, where we've come from. It's why we can enjoy Will Ferrell screaming at us for an hour and a half. He's a reflection of us, a chubby, hairy signpost of our history.

And it's why I'll give "Mad Men" some more time to impress me. At least until the Cuban Missile Crisis kicks in. Now who's up for a little THIRTEEN DAYS?

No one? Oh. Okay.

The PAUL Dating Quiz

2011-02-18T13:47:00.008-05:00

First things first: this isn't my magazine. It was given to me to review, and I'm a professional, so I'll do it.

I mean, I did already have a copy of it. Technically, it's mine. I bought it. But I don't do it regularly. I don't subscribe or anything. I could say I saw it lying open at a doctor's office, and I flipped a few pages to pass the time, or that it's my girlfriend's, but those would be lies.

My girlfriend? Oh, she's been in the Andromeda sector for years, you can't meet her.

The truth is, I like doing the quizzes.

Small side-note: I would advise you to skip pages 23-29, as the article on the sexual lives of Gamorreans was a little too in-depth for me.

But yes, the quizzes! Is there anything more limitless than a woman's health magazine quiz? Other than the universe, I mean. Ba-doom! Ching! They're great! You can find out if you have low zero-G aptitudes, what spacesuits are best for you, and that always-popular "are you a bitch?" one they seem to recycle every three months. And the best part is, they're always multiple choice! You can't lose, because if you don't like the result, you can just pick a slightly different catty response and become a completely different person!

Although, this cycle's quiz was a bit of a doozy. A real lack of imagination in the available responses.

I mean, Apple? Who would name their child after those monsters? Why not just name your baby Space Holocaust, or Starbuck?

Listen up, COSMIC: we expect better quizzes. I want to indulge in my multiple personalities with rampant glee, so smarten up. You've been put on notice. Hell, just give me the "are you a bitch" thing. Stick with what you know.

Brandon Forsyth blogs from the centre of the Douglas Black Hole. Readers are advised to send comments and criticisms via electronic mail, as lightmail is highly ineffective at this location. COSMIC 32467.2 will be on newstands and hololounges starting Monday, unless there was a miscalculation with the chronocalculator, in which case, we apologize, it won't be published for another 1000 years.

Badass Jesus: The Violent Christs Of ROBOCOP and Michael Jackson's MOONWALKER

2011-02-16T11:23:00.032-05:00

I'm on an extended vacation of sorts at the moment, and one of my goals is to catch up on a bunch of reading I've had piling up over the last few months. Two of the books on my pile are Christopher Moore's "Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal" and Philip Pullman's "The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ", so I've had Christianity on the brain for the last few weeks. But it's not just my reading material - lately, Jesus is everywhere.

Now, before you get too panicked, let me assure you no one is going to ask you to lift up your heart here. No one is going to read you an extended section of the Bible, then pause dramatically and ask you to say "Jehovah" at the applicable times. This ain't that.

But when I sat down yesterday and watched Michael Jackson's incredible vanity project MOONWALKER, I wasn't really prepared for the levels of Christ imagery I was going to get. And it made me think.

For those that are unaware, MOONWALKER is a music video compilation of Mr. Jackson's BAD album, half-assedly compiled into a narrative about stopping a nefarious drug dealer, Mr. Big (Joe Pesci), whose goal is to get the children of Earth addicted to his drugs. It was never released theatrically in North America, although it did garner a European release, and has since become a cult object for those lucky enough to find it on video. And I found it in a quaint British village grocery store, next to a bag of Cajun Squirrel crisps and a squirt bottle of mayo. It was meant to be.

It's laughably pieced together, especially the first half of the film, which is just a collection of music videos awkwardly sandwiched together with incredibly lazy linking scenes. It's mostly just a collection of Michael running away from the paparazzi, or his mindless screaming fans, into worlds of fantasy where he can sing and dance for a few minutes of bliss, before someone invades the fantasy and ruins everything. This section of the film could inspire a whole article about Jackson's troubling escapes to fantasy, and the depictions of his critics and admirers, but that feels a little too easy, and the second half of MOONWALKER is where the really interesting stuff happens.

That's the half where the whole Mr. Big plot comes in, and Jackson's child friend is kidnapped. Michael decides to go all RETURN OF THE JEDI on Mr. Big and strolls into his base to demand the release of Captain Solo, or whatever the hell the kid is called. Kerri? Kelly? It's not important. Before you can say Great Pit of Carkoon, this ingenious plan has failed terribly, and Jackson is surrounded by men with guns. But Michael doesn't have R2-D2 standing at the ready with a lightsaber; he is R2. Jackson literally transforms into a giant robot of righteous vengeance, and spends no time in wasting these goons with shoulder- and pelvic-mounted laser guns and rocket-propelled grenades (it's as uncomfortable to watch as it sounds). And when Pesci comes out with a giant laser gun of his own, Michael transforms (yet again) into some sort of jet fighter and blows up Pesci and his death ray in a terrific fireball.

What's particularly interesting to me in this fascinating disaster of a half-movie is the violence that Michael uses to resolve the situation. Aside from a giant, sloppy blowjob to Jackson's talent and ego, the film is quite clearly portraying him as a Jesus-like figure, and has messianic overtones from the get-go. These only become clearer over the course of the film, as there's a resurrection, an ascension, and a return to preach (to a cover of the Beatles' "Come Together", no less) spread throughout the final 10 minutes of the film. But whereas the Biblical Jesus patiently withstood the temptations of Satan for 40 days and turned the other cheek to his enemies, this Jesus wastes fools with lasers and (at one point) a tommy gun, to visuals as pornographic as any Schwarzenegger or Stallone '80's orgy of violence. How did this happen?

I think we need look no further than Paul Verhoeven's ROBOCOP for the answer to that one.

ROBOCOP came out in 1987, the year before MOONWALKER, and while it's clear that Jackson and whatever hack creative team he put together have cribbed bits of pop culture from everything from the Transformers, to WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?, to the fucking California Raisins, it's pretty clear what the main inspiration was. ROBOCOP has a strong, if satirical, law-and-order and anti-drug stance, and it looks like Jackson ate it up, along with the awesomeness of being an indestructible cyborg.

But what was ROBOCOP really about? Paul Verhoeven has called it a film about "the American Jesus" and, for the purposes of this article, let's call it "the Modern Jesus". I don't want to get bogged down in a discussion of American values, and I don't think that's (necessarily) what Verhoeven has in mind when he calls it that. He looks at America as the policeman of the world, as the people in charge of order, as fulfilling the role of the Modern Saviour.

When we look at it from this perspective, the Modern Jesus is an incredibly violent figure, and that has more to do with how we look at resolving problems today than any particular nation-state's ideology. No one believes in turning the other cheek. We've seen how that plays out. Neville Chamberlain, anyone? I think the vast majority of us believe that some degree of physical violence is needed to keep the bullies of the world in check, and that most of us want to marvel at our own magnificence and make out with Megan Fox as we sit victorious on the shoulders of our giant robot warriors. We don't want to be Shia LeBeouf - I repeat, we don't want to be Shia LeBeouf - but we do want to win (this is not an indictment of the American film system's need for clear-cut definitive victories).

This is completely antithetical to Jesus' ministry, and it almost feels like this is the issue at the heart of modern Catholicism's constant youth crisis. At some level, it feels like the biblical Jesus loses. Sure, he had to die to open the Kingdom of Heaven. Sure. That might be the case, but I don't think anyone was hanging a "Mission: Accomplished" banner over the crosses at Golgotha (this is not an indictment of the American military and political systems' need for clear-cut definitive victories).

The point is, as Steve Buscemi gleefully told us in ESCAPE FROM L.A., "this town loves a winner" (in this metaphor, I think 'this town' is supposed to be either 'us', or 'history', or possibly 'America' - it was really just an excuse to post a link to the ESCAPE FROM L.A. trailer) - Snake Plissken isn't inheriting the Earth through meekness, he's doing it by playing Bangkok Rules whilst wearing a badass leather trenchcoat.

What we're really getting at here is that our fascination with "the anti-hero" has reached a point where the anti-hero no longer exists. The two have become intractably linked. Our old heroes, Jesus, Superman, et al., are not only in the same category as the Dirty Harrys and Punishers of the new era, but they're actually the same. We haven't rejected the old heroes, since they're the basis for what we know; rather, we've rejected their stories and morphed them into something more modern, more palatable; in a word, more violent, and with clear-cut victories.

We don't really believe in Gandhi. We don't really believe in Martin Luther King Jr., either. We believe we have to use force to fight, to get what we want, to win. The Jasmine Revolution, probably our most modern example of some sort of ahimsa-like philosophy, is actually evidence of that - no one gave the Egyptians much of a chance until they held Tahrir Square, when they responded to violence with violence. That's when it became clear they would succeed. We no longer believe in the long-term, patient, non-violent victories our old heroes represent: in the words of the Egyptian protestors, we want victory now. Preferably with some sort of robot warrior, just so that it's as new as possible.

While looking for that video of Verhoeven talking about ROBOCOP, I discovered he has written a book called "Jesus of Nazareth", which is "a new vision of Jesus as a child born from the rape of Mary by a Roman soldier, as a spiritualist who performed exorcisms by screaming and spitting in the mouths of the possessed to drive out demons, and as a militant revolutionary who urged his followers to arm themselves."

Shit. That pile of books is going to get higher. I hope Jesus has a robot sidekick.

My Review of 4 Bond Films: File Under "BDSM, Non-Consensual"

2011-02-09T19:06:00.015-05:00

The last thing he could remember was the mustache.

For a brief second, Daniel Craig allowed himself the smallest of smiles. The sudden flare of white-hot pain that shot through his entire jaw removed any of the humour from the image of reporting a giant mustache to the police. Jesus. It felt like his entire chin was detached. He groaned, and could feel the salty tang of blood against his lower lip. He moved his left hand to wipe it away, but felt his arm restricted by the cold embrace of metal on his wrist. He looked down, only to discover he couldn't see a thing. A rising panic began to overwhelm the throbbing aches and pains he began to feel throughout his head. A blindfold? Handcuffs? What the hell was going on?

A voice, cold and crisp, cut through the pain and confusion. "You're awake."

Daniel tried to strain his head towards the voice, but an electric current of pain shot down the back of his neck and cut his motion short. He gasped in shock, a bubble of blood escaping his mouth and starting to trickle down his lips.

"I wouldn't strain yourself." There was a trace of enjoyment in the British voice, a sadistic quality that sent a chill down Daniel's neck. He stiffened in fear.

"Good," the voice chuckled. "Stay."

Daniel could hear footsteps circling him, each click of heel-toe seemingly lasting an eternity. His heart was racing. There was another sound, consistent between the footsteps, a slithering, heavy sound that conjured the unlikely image of a giant cobra circling him. He quelled the panic in his heart and tried to focus on breathing.

The footsteps and the slithering sound came to a halt. "Mr. Craig." The voice dripped with icy disdain. "I'm sure you're feeling most ... uncomfortable at the moment."

Daniel opened his mouth, about to reply that yes, he was bloody uncomfortable, amongst more vociferous objections, but before he could form a word, he felt something cold and sinuous drop in his lap. He was suddenly aware that he was naked. The words caught in his throat, and his fear began to know an entirely new dimension.

The voice was suddenly close, a hiss in his ear. "But as uncomfortable as you might be now, I can promise you that there are entire worlds of discomfort that you have never even dreamed of."

The object in Daniel's lap began to move, drawing back up his chest and over his shoulder. He could feel the bumpy knots in the thin material as it tortuously caressed him. He was torn between moving away from the sensation and staying frozen in place.

"You are here to answer one question, Mr. Craig," the voice said as the rope-like material continued to stroke his body. The end of it finally dropped off his shoulder and made a wicked snapping sound against the floor behind him. Daniel could feel his entire skin ripple with goosebumps as he realized that this lunatic had a whip.

"Are you ready for the question?"

Daniel could only nod his head in agreement.

"Who's your daddy?"

The question was so ridiculous, Daniel could only laugh at it. His entire body was wracked in cold agony as he chuckled, then embraced in hot fire as the whip came crashing down on his back. His laugh vanished in a second, replaced by a gasp and cold air.

"Think that's fucking funny, eh?" The whip crashed down again. "Maybe I should rephrase it." The footsteps came up behind him, the whip gently coming to rest on his back. It began to lazily trace the area between Daniel's shoulder blades, like sandpaper to his nerves.

The voice was at his ear again, a cold whisper. "Who's your... progenitor?"

The injustice of this all began to grate against Daniel. "I don't understand!" he raged.

There was a pause as the whip fell from his back. The hot fire of the whip was gone, but now the air itself seemed to attack his chafed skin, a thousand tiny icicles in his back. "Let me make it clear to you, Mr. Craig. Who do you owe all your success as James Bond to? Who have you copied? Whose villains were down-to-earth gun- and dope-runners? Who was a human Bond with emotional motivations? Who?"

The whip crashed down, driving the icicles into his muscles.

"Who?"

The whip emphasized the repetition.

"I don't know!" Daniel protested

"Yes you do! Say my name! SAY MY NAME, YOU DIRTY BLONDE BOND BITCH!"

"SCREAM 'TIMOTHY DALTON!'"

The mustache. Jesus. It all made sense.

Not Even Wim Wenders Could Make MOONRAKER Good

2011-02-08T09:39:00.007-05:00

For years, I laboured under the impression that MOONRAKER, the 1979 James Bond film, was a cheap response to STAR WARS that, in its rush to theatres, essentially just copied the script of THE SPY WHO LOVED ME, the 1977 Bond film. Watching both of these films again, it's clear that's not entirely true. There is a sharp difference between the two, and the difference is that MOONRAKER is terrible. Let's take a closer look:

It becomes clear to me, as I think about it, that many of the criticisms about Roger Moore's Bond are actually of his performance, and, indeed, the overall tone, in MOONRAKER. Now, I don't want to turn into some sort of Moore apologist, but what is one supposed to do when faced with this kind of absurdity except try to grin your way through it?

This movie should never have been made.

The Infuriating Smirk of Roger Moore

2011-02-06T13:52:00.012-05:00

Do you think there's an ideal age to see a film? That a movie will play better to a specific age group or demographic because the ideas in it are more relevant to those people?

If so, I think I was introduced to the James Bond films at the exact right time. I was around 11 or so, and the heady mix of girls, guns, and car chases went straight into my blood, like an adrenaline shot to the heart. I suspect the same is true for many young men. Our fondness for Bond is rooted in late night viewings of underwater spear gun battles and beautiful blondes in need of rescue. They're viewed in dens and basements with uncles and grandpas. They are simultaneously the fairy tales and the porn of our tween years.

I've written briefly about how Bond films are childhood fantasies writ large, but I find that they're almost all (with a very few interesting exceptions) actually a very particular fantasy we have as boys: the fantasy of growing up. Bond was the culmination of what I thought I'd become: the suave lady-killer, the dangerous rogue, the renowned expert on every subject under the sun. In a word: invulnerable.

Which is why the Roger Moore Bond films are, for the most part, unbearable.

Moore's approach to playing Bond was to smile his way through the metal-toothed and midget henchmen, knowingly grin at the Agent XXXs and Holly Goodheads, and double-take at the massive space stations and blimps of his enemies. He was having fun, and he wanted you to join in on the childish adventure. I suspect those that like Mr. Moore's portrayal were those who saw them as young boys, not as interested in vodka martinis as they were in space laser gun battles.

To those of us who were more intrigued by baccarat and Faberge eggs, though, that ever-present smile looked more like a smirk, refusing to play it straight. We could never connect to the fantasy while the ostensible narrator was grinning at us, mocking our desire to indulge in the ridiculous daydreams of childhood. To borrow a British phrase, he took the piss out of the whole thing.

This is, however, a generalization. Bond films all tell the same basic story, so we tend to combine them all into an actor's "version" of the Bond character (hence the often-repeated criticism of Timothy Dalton's Bond as "too dark and serious", although only one of Dalton's films is "serious" in any sense of the word). The truth is that each film has a distinct Bond, which plays distinctive notes about the character. To illustrate this, let's look at Moore's second effort, THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN.

THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN is a fascinating failure, a film that has so many great scenes and moments to add to the Bond mythos, but one that is ultimately done in by it's inability to play it straight. Oddly enough, almost none of this is Moore's fault. His Bond is the most grounded character in the whole mess, and for the most part, he plays it dead serious. The scene between him and Andrea Anders, Scaramanga's mistress, is of particular note. In the scene, Bond trails her and breaks into her hotel room, confronts her, then viciously slaps her and nearly breaks her arm. It's one of the darkest scenes in any Bond film. There's a sense in this scene of a brutal realism, of a lethality in Moore, that earnestly portrays the assassin that Bond is. It's a scene that never plays up Bond's sexual prowess to resolve the situation, and never winks at the audience. In as much that it comments on Bond's chauvinism and violent tendencies, it's a much more mature look at those childhood fantasies about the invulnerable male.

But for every scene like this one, which disturbs and pushes the viewer, there is an overlong scene with J.W. Pepper hurling racial epithets and generally embarrassing the franchise, or a gangster apologizing to a cardboard cutout of Al Capone for shooting it, or a midget butler bringing, of all things, Tabasco sauce to his master. THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN is scared to commit to the story, like a child who knows he's too old to order off the kid's menu, but just wants a hot dog really bad.

It is the only Bond film to ever really comment on Bond's "licence to kill" (other than, of course, LICENCE TO KILL), and the moral ambiguities inherent to such a thing. Christopher Lee's Scaramanga is a shadow of Bond, a fact Lee is only too fond to play with. There is a great dinner scene where the differences between the two men are laid out, and one feels like Bond is protesting just a tad too much. Like many of these great scenes in the film, though, it is immediately proceeded by a silly, winking scene that makes fun of it all. Lee is immediately saddled with a lengthy monologue about "solex agitators" and channeling the power of the sun in order to explode Bond's plane with a blast of solar energy. It's not enough that Scaramanga wants to kill Bond - now he's got a world domination scheme! It's ludicrous, and Lee looks like he's trying to get through it all as quickly as he can so he can get back to the duel between the two men.

But even the basic idea of the duel gets undermined by Scaramanga's ridiculous LaserQuest-y maze that the duel takes place in, replete with funhouse mirrors, a giant grizzly bear statue, and a life-size mannequin of James Bond. It's like Laser Quest with the lights on; no fun for anyone.

By the time we get to A VIEW TO A KILL, Moore's seventh and final outing as Bond, no one's even trying anymore.

Iceberg submarine with a British crest on it? Check. The title sequence now has neon in it. Ooh. Microchips are important. Hooray. Moore is so old at this point (58) that his most exciting stunts are performed by a horse. The Bond fantasy is about growing up, not growing old. There's nothing cool or exciting about 007 in this film - even the one relatively new trick in Bond's repertoire, snowboarding, is undercut by the use of The Beach Boys' "California Girls" (sadly, not a middle-finger-flipping gummie bear to be seen).

In fact, the most interesting characters in the film are the villains. Christopher Walken's Max Zorin and Grace Jones' May Day are the two most memorable antagonists in the Moore era. Walken's character is a gem, a steroid-bred lab baby, brilliant but psychotic, a KGB agent gone rogue. It plays perfectly to his unique delivery, and he seems to have great fun letting loose, killing both adversaries and allies with gleeful abandon. But it's Grace Jones who steals the show, with her lithe steroid-fuelled assassin. Her arc is a little cliché (her line after Zorin betrays her: "I thought that creep loved me!"), but her commanding presence breathes some life into an otherwise dull movie.

As good as these villains are, it all seems so paint-by-numbers at this point. The Bond character isn't really about anything in this movie. He just moves where the script tells him to go and does the things he's expected to do. Moore tries to coast by with that damn smirk, and it becomes obvious that the toothy grin is only getting toothier by the day.

But maybe when I'm 58, it'll play better to me.

What We Talk About When We Talk About SPIDER-MAN 2

2011-01-26T12:02:00.011-05:00

I first saw SPIDER-MAN 2 in a double feature with Tony Scott's MAN ON FIRE. I remember almost nothing from that screening. For years, I would hear friends talk about how awesome SPIDER-MAN 2 was, and I'd smile and nod my head, but really, I was just remembering Denzel Washington cutting people's fingers off as "Oye Como Va" and "Hey Mickey" played in the background. To each his own.

But there's one thing I have always remembered about SPIDER-MAN 2. During the bank robbery scene, Doctor Octopus starts throwing bags of money at Spider-Man, and they explode. Into coins. The bank is literally holding bags of coins, like the kind you'd see Scrooge McDuck jealously guarding on Sunday morning. They may as well have put the big dollar sign on the bags. It was kind of amusing at the time, but now, looking back at it, this decision has come to define the entire movie for me.

But first, what is SPIDER-MAN 2 ostensibly about? Sacrifice. No less than three characters have distinct speeches about giving up "your dream" in order to do "the right thing". Peter has to choose between being Spider-Man or being with Mary Jane. Octavius, in the climax of the film, has to choose between doing nothing or destroying his life's work. Throw in a big slice of survivor's guilt between Aunt May and Peter, and we're looking at some fairly heavy stuff. So what the hell is a movie with these serious thematic explorations doing with a ghost Willem Dafoe screaming "AVENGE ME!" and cartoon money bags?

The answer is that SPIDER-MAN 2 sits in that awkward transition between childhood and maturity that the best comic book movies manage to navigate. It's a very tricky minefield to walk through. When critics hate superhero movies, they throw "comic book" around like a dirty word, and when they do, they're referring to those things that only the juvenile can truly believe in: giant ice death rays, assassins who kill people with their amazing darts skills, and the like. These sorts of "comic book" movies get the most scorn because they veer too far into fantasy.

Getting too real, though, won't bring the kids in. I give you SPAWN, or any version of THE PUNISHER. People don't heap scorn on these movies, though - more often, they're just met with shrugs and quickly forgotten. They're movies for niche audiences, the ones who want to see sobering theological debate between Black Dynamite and John Leguizamo in a fatsuit. Most of us just don't get it. Instead, we seem to want a mix of the fantasy of comic books with an undercurrent of more adult concerns. In 1989, we wanted Batman to have a ridiculous bat-shaped jet fighter, but we basically voided the purpose of that plane by demanding that we examine Batman's "one rule" philosophy. I mean, why does he have the Batwing equipped with machine guns if he won't kill people? Because we want to see a goddamned Batwing, that's why.

So what are we talking about when we talk about SPIDER-MAN 2? We're talking about childhood dreams and adult pessimism, and we're talking about a weird space where we want to indulge in that fantasy, but we can't validate it without it coming from a sober adult perspective. The ending to SPIDER-MAN 2 is the perfect encapsulation of this push and pull. After Mary Jane and Peter have been apart for the whole movie, doing the adult thing, there's a moment of elation as they unite, as they've known they should since they were teenagers. This emotion should coast us out of the theatre as we swing through the city. But our reservation about this kind of fantasy rears its head, and the film undercuts this elation right as the Sum 41 should be kicking in, instead lingering back on a wistful Mary Jane as she watches her love fly away, in an ominous portent of the future.

The point is, when it comes to entertainment, especially summer blockbuster entertainment, we're not quite satisfied with being youthfully exuberant or a grown-up killjoy. We want a little of both.

And that's why there are exploding bags of coins in a movie about sacrifice.

(Almost) 12 Angry (Or Jealous) Men (and Women): The Characters of David Fincher (Part II)

2011-01-24T15:09:00.027-05:00

On the heels of THE SOCIAL NETWORK's 8 Oscar nominations this morning, we now return to our exploration of the filmography and protagonists of David Fincher. Part I can be found here.

ANGRY PERSON #4: NICHOLAS VAN ORTON (THE GAME)

Following the critical and commercial success of SE7EN, Fincher could have done almost anything he wanted. So why, in the whole wide world, did he pick a script from the writers of THE NET? (Amusing side note: these two All-Stars would go on to write TERMINATOR 3: RISE OF THE MACHINES, TERMINATOR: SALVATION, and Halle Berry's CATWOMAN. We can all dread Anne Hathaway stepping into Michelle Pfeiffer's boots if we want to, but I think we've already reached the depths of Catwoman-related depravity, don't you?)

Despite the astounding levels of future failure reached by these writers, THE GAME actually remains a very fun film, and a very Fincher-ian one at that. All three films I'll look at today hinge on an exploration of violence and subdued anger, and it's a definite thematic link through this section of Fincher's filmography. THE GAME does this almost entirely through the character of Nicholas Van Orton, one of Michael Douglas' most interesting performances.

The emotional key to his performance is the line, "Right now, I am extremely dangerous," which comes in the last act of the film. Fincher's interested in what leads him to this point. Van Orton is set up as an emotionally frigid and aloof character, but the film charts his path from disconnected loner to violent paranoid in such a way that, by the end of the film, Douglas seems more rabid animal than sophisticated man of finance.

Not to say this transformation isn't understandable. Van Orton is the audience's eyes and ears - every scene is told from his perspective. He is the one constant. He is us. THE GAME is a wonderfully post-modern film, playing with genre conventions in a dizzying, layered way, and if you can convince yourself that "the game" is really about filmmaking, there's an interesting angle to approach the character of Van Orton from, where he literally becomes the embodiment of a film audience.

At the beginning of the film, Van Orton is a man in charge of his environment. He lets nothing and no one in. All of his relationships are strictly one-way, similar to our notions of how the relation between film and viewer should be. But from the moment the game begins, Van Orton begins to surrender control, first over his environment, then over others, and finally over himself, to the point where he is willing to commit murder. He is driven to a point where his control ceases to exist, and he becomes pure rage.

It's relatively clear what Fincher is saying about humanity here, that we live in delusions of control, and underneath these pretenses is a simmering rage at being unable to reign in the chaos of life (sidebar: holy shit, was this what ALIEN3 was supposed to be about? Is the alien a representation of the rage at our own illusions? Did I not get enough sleep last night?), but what is he saying about film?

The key here is whether or not we believe Van Orton "completes" the game. Certainly, there seems to be an ending, and a lesson learned, but there's that ambiguous scene at the very end of the film which leaves this question open to interpretation. If Van Orton completes, then Fincher's thesis on film appears to be that the medium (and, I suppose, art as a whole) allows us to learn things about ourselves, but that it's ultimately an entertainment. If the game continues on past the credits, than the view of film is decidedly more complex, arguing that we may be unable to categorize between reality and fantasy, that they can become interchangeable, and that we live in both, perhaps simultaneously.

ANGRY PERSON #5: TYLER DURDEN/JACK (FIGHT CLUB)

Which brings us to living two realities at once, and the inherent envies and wraths that entails. Have you, somehow, not seen FIGHT CLUB? Because not only should you not read the next section, you should also run out to your local place of video procurement, get a copy, and watch it at your earliest convenience.

Actually, there's not a lot I want to talk about in regards to FIGHT CLUB. The whole film seethes with rage at the trappings of modern society, perfectly given a voice in Tyler Durden, who sounds like some sort of Oprah-Unabomber love-child:

Tyler: Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off.

Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden is essentially the other side of David Mills, his detective character from SE7EN. The depiction of anger in SE7EN was about how that emotion blinded and enslaved us. FIGHT CLUB is about that, too, but it approaches it from the completely opposite angle - from a look at how that anger feels freeing and exuberant. Tyler Durden is a man without limits, freed by his rage to accomplish anything. Of course, that's because he's only half a man. Here, Fincher finally gets down to why anger is such a powerful force: because it feels good. We give into anger because the anger feels like it completes us, or brings us power.

The flip side of the coin is Ed Norton's character, who has no name, but is usually referred to as Jack (due to the meme-inspiring "I am Jack's colon" articles the narrator reads aloud at one point). Jack is consumed with jealousy, and it is this jealousy that helps make him relatable. Durden's anger gives him power, but it also makes him an outcast. It's through Jack's envy of Durden's freedom that we enter the world of FIGHT CLUB. It's a perfect mirror to the interior conflicts of the social contract. Our surrender of the survival instincts in exchange for the comforts of civilization chafes against the animal inside each of us. On some level, we envy the purity of the animal kingdom. Despite our intellectual understanding of the benefits of society, a part of us emotionally wants to be an alpha male, or a mother protecting her cub, because it is, in a word, simpler.

ANGRY PERSON #6: MEG ALTMAN (PANIC ROOM)

That simple mother-cub relationship is at the crux of PANIC ROOM. But first, before we get too into this, can anyone explain these fucking titles to me?

This is the first time I can remember seeing these 3D titles composited into live plates like they were actually hanging in real space, and even then, I was confused. What are they supposed to represent? Are you making me aware of the artifice of the titles for any particular reason? I'm pretty sure it's just supposed to look cool.

And that's pretty much the reason I think PANIC ROOM is kind of a shitty film (along with this ridiculous look-at-me into-the-lock-through-the-coffeepot-handle establishing shot, which no one will be able to convince me was a good idea). It's a film obsessed with style, and little else. There's some suspenseful moments, but it's not a film you ever really want to re-watch. Fincher ushered in the era of the completely-previsualized studio film with PANIC ROOM, diagramming the entire set in a computer and moving around little digitized models of his actors so he could work everything out before shooting commenced. When Nicole Kidman dropped out of the production, and Jodie Foster stepped in, all the camera information had to be re-calculated for the 8" difference in heights between the two actresses. The whole thing is just a little too constructed.

To that point, I've read defenses of PANIC ROOM that argue that the entire film is constructed as an elaborate look at Freudian psychology, with either the different levels of the house or the three thieves representing the id, ego, and superego. I'm not sure that I buy that (in fact, I'm pretty sure I don't), but there's definitely a tug-of-war between those animalistic tendencies and the higher forms of social behaviour throughout the film.

Meg tries to bargain with the thieves at first, negotiating with them, but it devolves into a fight for survival fairly rapidly. This is another reason PANIC ROOM is less interesting than Fincher's other films from this period. THE GAME and FIGHT CLUB are about a struggle between ideologies. PANIC ROOM is like a time-traveling Roman emperor who microwaves some popcorn, throws a sledgehammer and a gun into the Colosseum, and gives Jodie Foster a shield, just to sit back and see what happens. I mean, it's still interesting, and other films have been made about pretty much this exact thing (subtle Ridley Scott burn!), but it doesn't really engage the viewer mentally beyond a where-are-they/where-is-she interest. PANIC ROOM is all about visceral, primal needs.

I think that's been enough for one day. I'll be back with an evisceration of Benjamin Button and Jake Gyllenhaal, then balance it out with praise for Jesse Eisenberg and why I think Fincher really, really needs to not do the remake of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO.

Feminism, Michelle Pfeiffer, and the Tragedy of Falling In Love At The Movies

2011-01-14T13:20:00.010-05:00

Why do we go to the movies?

Aside from entertainment, or to learn something about the human condition, or because the neighbourhood Classic Bowl was closed due to a tragic gutter ball accident, I mean.

Speaking for myself, I know I go to the movies to fall in love.

It's like the safest one-night stand you can ever have, except instead of a physical connection (and risk), falling in love with someone in a film approaches the spiritual (and its accordant risk). I can vividly recall my cinematic loves, like the girl on Gordon Street, or the girl with a white parasol, glorious technicolour beauties with 5.1 surround voices, stuck in two dimensions and shared with strangers in the dark.

Rachel Weisz in THE MUMMY. Audrey Tautou in AMELIE. Eva Marie Saint in NORTH BY NORTHWEST. Leslie Bibb in SEX AND DEATH 101. Michelle Monaghan in KISS KISS BANG BANG. Rachael Leigh Cook in ... well, pretty much anything, but definitely SHE'S ALL THAT.

And Michelle Pfeiffer in BATMAN RETURNS.

Oh, Michelle Pfeiffer. Did you have any idea what you were doing when you stepped into Catwoman's knee-high boots? Did you set out to inflame desire and break hearts?

You played the demure secretary-turned sex kitten with such relish, such joy, that it's impossible to not fall in love with this performance. You play Selina Kyle as the epitome of confused female empowerment, an even-more perfect study in duality than the film's protagonist: both reveling in and scared by your power, alternately abused and loved by men, a product of society and trashing it at the same time. These are powerful forces, maybe too powerful for some viewers.

I would have been six in 1992, when BATMAN RETURNS came out. I didn't even know what the words were for what was happening to me. I wanted to save Catwoman; I wanted to make Selina Kyle smile. I wanted to hug Selina Kyle; I wanted to do ... something... to Catwoman. Only by looking back, can I name my pain: heartache. I'm no developmental psychologist, but I'd guess that six years old is too young for a boy to fall in love and have his heart broken. And Michelle Pfeiffer did it all in just 126 minutes, one chilly night in, of all places for a star-crossed romance, sleepy small-town Mississauga (a town so sleepy, we had a town mascot named 'Mister Sauga'. Now that's a tired PR staff).

That's the great tragedy of falling in love with film characters, of course - the credits are coming, and then it's all over. We'll be free to watch the film again, but it'll just be revisiting a memory. You only fall in love once, right? And like the hopeless romantics on a missed connections message board, we're doomed to relive those moments again and again.

But like those poor devils who exchange brief-but-meaningful glances from opposing subway cars, we eventually realize that there's always a new train coming (films are now trains, who are, of course, girls, in this horribly overwrought metaphor). We might only fall in love once, but if the string of names I listed above are any indication, we might not. We inevitably recognize that there are plenty of fish in the sea. Get it? Sea? 'C'? Catwoman!

Perhaps there are plenty of fish, but we can never forget the first time we were caught. Thank you, Ms. Pfieffer, for giving me another reason to go to the movies. If you'll excuse me, I'm off to watch THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO.

Dispatch #53: Of The Devil And Nicolas Cage

2011-01-09T22:11:00.009-05:00

Really, Nicolas Cage?

I felt like I could almost end the post here and the point would be pretty much exactly the same.

SEASON OF THE WITCH?

What the hell, man?

About an hour into your latest film, I realized I would so much rather be watching THE THING that I started fantasizing about characters in the film growing horrifying appendages and/or being Kurt Russell.

A further half hour into the film, I realized I would even settle for END OF DAYS, the movie that thought ROSEMARY'S BABY was cool and all, but would probably be better if Arnold Schwarzenegger punched the Devil in the face at the end (which, arguably, is a valid point).

By the end of the film, that list of films-I-would-rather-be-watching had expanded to include CONSTANTINE, THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE, KINGDOM OF HEAVEN, PRIEST, IN THE NAME OF THE ROSE, GONE IN 60 SECONDS, and even fucking GHOST RIDER.

Yes, Mr. Cage. GHOST RIDER. The cinematic abortion you released on the world in 2007. I'll be honest, I wouldn't really be watching the movie, as much as I'd be playing the drinking game Take A Shot For Every Button Undone On Eva Mendes' Blouses (you will get fucked up), but I think you get it. With five minutes left in your new film, I realized I would rather watch the entirety of the 123-minute Director's Cut then sit through another single minute of SEASON OF THE WITCH.

So if you're stuck at some God-forsaken multiplex this week and your friend says, "Hey, what about SEASON OF THE WITCH? Maybe it'll be bad-good," just look them dead in the eyes and say, "I've heard that movie is exactly 123 times more terrible than fucking GHOST RIDER."

And then, perhaps, "GULLIVER'S TRAVELS?"

I'm So Thirsty I Could Cut Your Arm Off (And Other Connections)

2011-01-06T14:07:00.025-05:00

I saw three movies yesterday, one of the side benefits of quitting one's job. So if I seem a little harsh or morbid in this article, just picture these words coming from a scraggly-bearded, unemployed man, and the whole thing might make a little more sense.

The first film I saw is a personal favorite of mine: LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, the 1962 David Lean masterpiece that swept the Oscars that year. I saw it in a stunning 70mm print at the Lightbox, and if they ever play it again, I will pay for your ticket. I'm serious. You need to see it.

Here's what it won that year: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Sound, Best Color Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Art Direction, and Best Score. It was also nominated for Best Writing (Adapted), Peter O'Toole should have won for Best Actor (Gregory Peck won for TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD) and Omar Sharif was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. Of course, all of this means nothing. We all know how stupid the Oscars can be, and how great BENJAMIN BUTTON was (more on that later).

In this case, though, the awards are justly deserved. LAWRENCE OF ARABIA will continue to survive the test of time because it's about some very complicated issues while also tapping into some really primal stuff. Because while you could argue that LAWRENCE is about culture clash, or colonialism, or even celebrity, it's really about water.

Not in the way POSEIDON or even CHINATOWN is, of course. It's about what water means to us, as people. How we all need it, and how that need defines and divides us. Some of the strongest moments in the film revolve around how thirst motivates and drives the characters. Consider the following line, one of my favorite in all of cinema:

AUDA ABU TAYI: I carry twenty-three great wounds, all got in battle. Seventy-five men have I killed with my own hands in battle. I scatter, I burn my enemies' tents. I take away their flocks and herds. The Turks pay me a golden treasure, yet I am poor! Because I am a river to my people!

or the following:

SHERIF ALI (after killing a man who has stolen water): He was nothing. The well is everything.

And finally:

LAWRENCE: He likes your lemonade.

Humanity is defined by what it does for survival. In those three lines, it defines a man as part of a community, it justifies a murder, and it shows how we separate and persecute each other (the third one would take way too much context to explain, but trust me, it does). Some of this stuff is on the surface, and some of it is only really clear upon contemplation, but there's one thing you're really conscious of for the whole film: you want a drink.

Really, really bad. It's the kind of thirst where you go to the concession stand and the only drink they have is Fresca and even so, you're like, "Give me a large."

A lot of that is attributable to the stunning desert photography, some of it might be due to subliminal Coke advertising, but I think a lot of it is due to the fact that the film really asks you to consider the basics of human survival.

The second film I saw was Danny Boyle's 127 HOURS, which has similar considerations at heart.

127 HOURS works best when it's focused on the nitty-gritty of human survival. For those unfamiliar with the story, it's based on the true story of one Aron Ralston, who got trapped while hiking and eventually had to sever his own arm in order to escape.

I've had major problems with director Danny Boyle's work in the past, and 127 HOURS is no exception. Traditionally, I've found that Boyle's stories take extremely divergent turns in the third act (I'm looking at you, 28 DAYS LATER and SUNSHINE) and are never really resolved in a satisfying way. That's not a problem here, as the story has a fairly obvious structure, but Boyle won't let the desperation of the situation play itself out. He wants to make this more than just a survival story.

It's clear that Boyle sees Ralston's situation as a larger metaphor for human connection and isolation. It's that old no-man-is-an-island chestnut, and Boyle drives it home in some very effective ways. There's some great fantasy/flashback/hallucinatory sequences that emphasize the need for other people in our lives, and the ways in which we shun it. The problem is that these scenes actually take away from the situation Ralston is actually in.

Boyle uses a lot of visual flair in the flashaways, using split-screens, heavy contrast and saturation, and layered images to evoke the reflective and/or hallucinatory state of the protagonist, but for me, the most exciting shot of the film occurs in the canyon as Ralston runs out of water. Boyle sets up a great device by having a camera inside the water bottle every time Ralston takes a ration. Shooting through the water, we get a murky and distorted view of James Franco's face, but every time we come back to the shot, and the water level drops, Franco is a little clearer to the audience. The last time Boyle comes back to this shot, it isn't Franco's face we see, but just a set of teeth and a tongue desperately crammed into the lid of the bottle, frantically trying to get some more water. It's a viscerally human shot, evoking the fragility and terror of human survival. It's not as dramatic as the amputation, but it's just as effective.

There's an amputation (sorta) in TRON LEGACY as well, the third film of my triple feature, but it doesn't carry any of the power of the one in 127 HOURS.

The major difference is that when the amputation comes in 127 HOURS, you've been dreading it, and the film makes you pay for watching it. When the TRON amputation comes up, you're thinking, "Thank God something finally happened."

Rarely have I seen a film with so little happening. Actually, that's not quite fair. I've rarely seen a film with so little new happening. I've read a few defenses of TRON that seem to boil down to, "You guys don't get it. It's all about Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth and the 7 Steps of the Hero and bio-digital jazz."

Guess what? We all get it.

I'll freely admit I've never read Joseph Campbell. Or Jungian archetypal theory. I honestly don't think I have to anymore. Because every childhood story I've seen is based on it. TRON LEGACY is more than happy to just plug its characters into the world's most basic formula and sit back and let the story tell itself. This is a film that desperately wants to be about "everything - science, medicine, religion", but only has the soul of a computer - endlessly outputting data from code. It's that exciting.

That tagline on the poster is quite apt - "it's not just a game anymore" perfectly distills how not-fun this movie is. There are occasional action beats that look cool and have clearly been designed with the idea of "This'll be a killer trailer shot", but these moments only serve to remind you of how hollow the rest of it feels. In fact, what this really feels like is a fanboy trailer, expanded to two hours and given $200 million dollars, with little regard for plot or character or purpose.

Maybe I'm just bitter. But when I think of a new generation of fanboys growing up on this kind of drivel, it's like going to a pop machine on a hot summer's day only to find out it's full of Fresca. And I just want to tear somebody's arm off.

The Top 10 of 2010

2011-01-01T15:39:00.009-05:00

Do you believe in heliocentricity? Well then, Happy New Year, you crazy sun-worshippers!

In the spirit of universe-defining observation, allow me to (ever so) humbly present my best-of list for the year. Some of these choices might be attacked, but like the Platos of yesteryear, the haters'll eventually come around.

10. UNSTOPPABLE

Did you think this wasn't going to make the list? C'mon, son.

9. PIRANHA 3D

Oh good Lord, the ridiculousness.

8. TOY STORY 3D

Pixar proves they can make anything amazing, even a film about mortality.

7. SPLICE

Beautifully warped.

6. BLACK SWAN

Darren Aronofsky proves he knows how to have fun.

5. EXIT THROUGH THE GIFTSHOP

The most fun you'll have at a documentary all year.

4. NEVER LET ME GO

Quiet sci-fi with a hell of an emotional gut-punch.

3. MARWENCOL

The finest documentary of the year.

2. INCEPTION

The zero-G fight is pure cinema.

1. THE SOCIAL NETWORK

Perfect.

The truth is, I didn't see a lot of films this year. That will change. But here's a quick list of things I missed this year that I have a sneaking suspicion might have made the list:

A PROPHET

WINNEBAGO MAN

GET LOW

CATFISH

HOWL

THE RED RIDING TRILOGY

Feel free to passionately disagree/talk about how Dren should have pheromones/snicker about Jerry O'Connell etc. below. In the meantime, I'll see you at the movies!

(Almost) 12 Angry (Or Jealous) Men (and Women): The Characters of David Fincher (Part I)

2010-12-26T23:16:00.024-05:00

I'm compiling my top ten of 2010, looking at the last year in film, and, just to spoil the suspense a bit, my top film of the year is going to be David Fincher's THE SOCIAL NETWORK.

It's a work of genius. Yes, genius. It's subtle and restrained, haunting and unforgettable. The final frame of the film is simultaneously hopeful and pathetic, funny and touching, taking the mundane and making it beautifully human and resonant. I haven't seen anything like it in years, and I'll be spoiled if I see something that approaches it next year.

I think the highest compliment I can bestow upon the film is that I've been reviewing the past work of it's key creative personnel ever since I watched it. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's SPORTS NIGHT and THE WEST WING have been my go-to TV shows as of late (sorry, THE VAMPIRE DIARIES), I've been absorbed in composer Trent Reznor's oddly-uplifting "Ghosts" in between bumping the new Kanye, and I've been watching a lot of David Fincher movies.

And not writing about them. In the words of Talib Kweli, one of Kanye's musical mentors, "They say I'm back - but I ain't go nowhere, though - I've been here the whole time. Where you been? You back." Regardless of who left who, who killed who, and who forgot their surprisingly juvenile Blogspot password, the fact is the blog is back.

To celebrate, I've decided to take a ridiculously long look at Fincher's films, and write a little essay about how he uses anger and jealousy in his lead characters.

ANGRY PERSON #1: ELLEN RIPLEY (ALIEN3)

Much has been made of ALIEN3 and it's troubled production history. I don't think Fincher even considers it "his" film any more. But we'd have to assume something drew him to the project to begin with (aside from getting out of the music video world on a huge Hollywood sequel, that is). I'm going to focus mainly on protagonists, so let's look at what happens to Ripley in ALIEN3.

Right off the bat, Fincher kills off Newt, the adorable orphan moppet from ALIENS, in a clear attempt to up the stakes. One of the most interesting things about ALIENS is the Ripley-Newt dynamic, and the depiction of Ripley as a mother. In fact, I would posit that ALIENS is the great female empowerment film of the 1980s, one in which a woman can kick ass and hold her own with the boys without using her sexuality as a bargaining chip. Cameron's Ripley was a badass who could sacrifice life while being incredibly maternal at the same time. Without Newt around, Ripley loses an element that made her so fascinating in the earlier film.

And this isn't the only thing Fincher takes away from the character - he shaves her head and outfits her in the same drab wardrobe as the rest of the all-male cast, stripping her of her sexuality. Fincher (and writer Vincent Ward) seem to be determined to get to the base humanity of Ripley, to the point of completely removing her femininity. Of course, the climax of the film makes it clear that they haven't forgotten that Ripley is a woman - the abortionist overtones of Ripley's death are an interesting and warped counterpoint to ALIENS' defense and indeed, celebration, of motherhood.

But what do we learn about Ripley by the end of ALIEN3? The answer is not much. We find out that she is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect the world. We pretty much already knew that. We also see that she's pretty pissed off about this phallic alien who keeps fucking up her life. We can get that, too. That's about it.

One of the (many) problems with ALIEN3 is that you get the sense that Fincher is a lot more interested in the convicts on the planet than with Ripley, but since the story has to be about Ripley, he's never really sure what to do with her. He'd rather be talking about, y'know, jail, and society and stuff. He never taps into the rage we expect to see from Ripley about Newt or Hicks' death, and he never plays her anger off against the anger of the convicts in a particularly interesting way.

Let's be honest: ALIEN3 is clearly a product of eight or nine different interests, and it's a confusingly beautiful mess because of it. Fincher can't be criticized for a lot of that. But Fincher's handling of his female leads is a disturbingly weak spot in my opinion, and one that we'll check back in on as we go.

ANGRY PERSONAGES #2 AND #3: DAVID MILLS AND JOHN DOE (SE7EN)

Another fair criticism of Fincher's work is that he can sometimes paint with too broad a brush, making his characters archetypes instead of real people. Nowhere is that more prevalent than in SE7EN (or, as the sane would type it, SEVEN - thanks for inventing l33tsp3ak, Mr. Fincher). I'd make the argument that this film needs that sort of mythic touch - it is, after all, a moral parable. The characters need to be representative, at least on one level, rather than individuals.

But there's no denying that Brad Pitt occasionally plays it a bit big. His Detective David Mills, or, perhaps more accurately, Wrath, is a man consumed by barely-contained rage, and Pitt likes to play up the explosion and underplay the smolder. I generally like Pitt, and I think he's become a fine actor, but I think he's a little out of his league here. Contrasted with Morgan Freeman, Pitt's performance seems obvious and a little showy - which, in an amusing way, actually enhances the rookie-veteran dynamic between the two.

Mills is perhaps the most fascinating character in Fincher's filmography, and possibly the most telling as well. The fact that character and creator share a first name may be coincidence, but the astounding physical similarities seem more than a bit planned. Watching behind-the-scenes footage of SE7EN and determining who is Pitt and who is Fincher (hint: Fincher's the one who isn't Brad Pitt) is probably the only EPK that can function as a drinking game (aside from the always-popular EPK drinking game of "Take A Shot Every Time Someone Says, 'It was a pleasure working with ...'"). It's clear that Fincher sees a lot of himself in the character, and with the pivotal decision of the climax resting entirely on Mills' shoulders, the audience is placed in his shoes for much of the film.

What truly elevates SE7EN though, is how uncomfortably close we get to John Doe, the killer played with menacing calm by Kevin Spacey. Doe does some truly horrifying things in the film, but when he speaks, it's with disturbing rationality. His philosophy is one without forgiveness, a merciless indictment of his fellow man, but one that is logically derived from it's biblical source. What's even more notable is how little time Doe truly has with the audience - a little over twenty minutes. This is some of the most awkward twenty minutes in modern cinema (excluding, of course, watching SCARY MOVIE with your dad).

Fincher very deliberately puts the cop car divider between the audience and Doe for the entire drive out to the desert (when Doe gets his big speeches and the majority of his screen time), almost as if to emphasize the difference between the emotional gap between what Doe has done and what Fincher's asking us to do: sympathize with the villain. Doe has crafted this morality play, and in that sense, one can see how Fincher would relate to him as well: they're co-directors of this charming pastiche of death and sin.

But what makes Doe disturbingly relatable to the audience is how he has cast himself: as Envy. He isn't above his own moral judgments. He deserves to die for his sins as well. And jealousy, much more than wrath, is a wholly relatable sin. In fact, in Part II of my review of Fincher's characters, I'll make the argument that he often uses jealousy as a tool to make his villains more sympathetic and his heroes more human.

Come back soon when we'll take a look at THE GAME, FIGHT CLUB, and PANIC ROOM. And next time I'll bring the grimy beats out the dungeon.

I'd Rather Have Pie

2010-11-17T13:38:00.003-05:00

SPEED RACER and Why You're Never Too Old for Halloween

2010-11-08T15:56:00.013-05:00

Film criticism can be, as Kriss Kross would put it, whickity-whickity-whack. I think there's a valid place for commentary and dialogue, but assigning a numerical value to a film's quality? Why not assign foods (THE DARK KNIGHT was clearly a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios) or holidays (VALENTINE'S DAY = Remembrance Day) to a film?

With that atrociously half-hearted segue, I'd like to posit that SPEED RACER is clearly the Halloween of movies. It's a big, fun kid's movie all dressed up in bright colours and running on pure sugar. There are no less than three scenes about the joy of candy. If you can handle the head rush from the compositing and overwhelming visual palette, you'll find a film about the joys of family and coming home. It's almost exactly like the joy of abandoning the cold of those October nights, emptying the pillowcases, and sorting the candy into chocolate and gummy bowls.

The majority of the Wachowski's last film is rooted in childlike joy and innocence, but the finale is downright orgasmic, a stunning ten minutes of film that sweeps you up in an emotional swell and release the likes of which I've rarely seen. So on second thought, it's like what Halloween becomes: where it's less about some house handing out full-size Twix bars and more about finding a hot Spock to lose your hobbit cloak with (so to speak). Or maybe it's both at once, a combination of Halloweens past and present.

Waking up the next morning, cookie crumbs down the front of your shirt, chocolate smeared on your fingertips, and a used condom hanging over your wastebasket, you might be inclined to feel a little shame. And I think that's what must have happened to the numerous critics who destroyed the film with merciless reviews upon it's release. Many of them derided the film as juvenile, frenetic, and only appealing to 12 year-olds, sounding like jilted lovers bemoaning a lack of commitment. The critics doth protest too much, methinks.

Now, I can admit to myself that I'm a cinematic slut. And while SPEED RACER didn't make me that way, I can enjoy our two hours together. I can even overlook that monkey.

Ten More Intriguing Questions Than "Who Is SALT?"

2010-10-20T20:43:00.007-04:00

Columbia Pictures chose to market their summer would-be blockbuster SALT with the tagline, "Who Is Salt?" in some sort of attempt to virally intrigue me into a search for the source of Gandhi's power. There was also the ill-advised "Day X Exists", which of course contained the implied question, "How many shoulders can one tagline shrug?" But much like an e-mail telling me about those stamps I ordered, simply ignoring these questions seemed much easier. In that spirit, I humbly present these ten questions, which I feel would do a much better job at intriguing me (or at least offend me) into watching SALT:

1) Why has Chiwetel Ejiofor continued to not change his name?

2) Wouldn't Burt Blackwell be a much better name for him?

3) No?

4) Would you greenlight a pitch that consisted of the words "THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE meets Bruce Willis' THE JACKAL"? Then fuck you, pal.

5) Is it possible that Philip Noyce, the once-great director of fare like THE QUIET AMERICAN and CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER, but is now the guy you call when you're the pilot of TRU CALLING, reached an all-new career low?

6) And if so, is it possible to get lower?

7) Has an actor ever slept throughout the entirety of a film shoot, as Liev Schreiber appears to be in every single frame of SALT?

8) If so, why doesn't he look healthier?

9) Was he not eating or something?

10) I mean, dude looks like a skeleton. Couldn't we have put an IV in him while he was hibernating or whatever?

Marketing firms, I am available on a consultation basis. Holla at ya boi.

A Tale of Three ROBIN HOODs

2010-10-12T23:17:00.005-04:00

The title of this blog is, as you may observe, Tony Scott's Only Fan. As such, I find myself obligated to follow a sort of self-mandated mission statement of sorts, which consists of the following three general guidelines:

1) Acknowledge Tony Scott's awesomeness at all times.

2) Work in as many references to Tony's extended filmography as humanly possible.

3) Viciously attack Ridley Scott as an overrated hack, so that one day in the distant future someone will say, "Oh, Tony Scott's brother?" when discussing the director of ALIEN, BLADE RUNNER, and 1492: CONQUEST OF PARADISE.

Which brings us to ROBIN HOOD, Ridley's regrettable attempt to work once again in the historical film genre. To adequately present my disdain for the film, I give you the following compare-and-contrast chart between Ridley's ROBIN HOOD, the 1973 Disney take, and Mel Brooks' ROBIN HOOD: MEN IN TIGHTS.

	Robin Hood (‘73)	Men In Tights	Robin Hood (‘10)
Portrayal of Robin Hood	Precocious fox with a death wish – the clear winner	Cary Elwes – mostly reacting to things and grimacing.	Russell Crowe, mumbling and generally unkempt
Historical Accuracy	Who gives a fuck when it’s this entertaining? Plus there’s that whole minstrel rooster thing to add a subjective cop-out	Dave Chappelle playing a man with rights, freedoms	Who gives a fuck when it’s this boring?
Soundtrack	“Oo-de-lally, oo-de-lally, golly what a day”	Mel Brooks-written raps	Marc Streitenfeld doing a passable Hans Zimmer impression
Most Memorable Line	“It appears that I now have an outlaw for an inlaw”	“King illegal forest to pig wild kill in it a is!”	“Rise and rise, until lambs become lions”
Most Disturbing Moment	Cross-dressing bear stuffs money into bra, encourages cat-calls.	Cross-dressing Robert Downey Jr. lookalike moving fake breast around on chest.	When I paid $4.50 to see this, then another $3 in late fees.
Maid Marion	A fox who plays badminton – TOO SOON.	Is Peggy from THE MASK.	Cate Blanchett, since it is in her contract to play these roles.
Merry Men	Very few to be seen, other than a bunch of kids that tag along and are given lethal weapons by Robin.	Chorus line drunkards – probably the most accurate portrayal.	Not really any to be seen, unless you want to count that kid wearing a rabbit on his face.
Coherent Political Philosophy?	Borderline anarchist – Robin appears to like King Richard, but despise most of the principles of government	None on evidence.	Main belief appears to be “Everyone can unite against the French”, but there’s also some token equality-of-men stuff.
Burning Castles?	Hells yes!	Sadly, no.	Does a drawbridge count?
Bryan Adams?	No	Nope	No, but there is that dude from Great Big Sea.
Most Badass Moment of Archery	Splitting one arrow with another	Sadly misguided attempt at missile defence commentary combined with an attempt to explain where The Wave came from.	Ummm… he shoots a guy in the back? OH, BUT IN SLOW MOTION.
The Bottom Line	Gets the Robin Hood mythos	The best jokes are from other Mel Brooks movies	Is not, in fact, the Robin Hood mythos and tells a story no one wants to see.

Opinion Stated As Fact: Tony Scott Makes CITIZEN KANE Better

2010-10-07T01:27:00.019-04:00

Here's the obligatory "CITIZEN KANE is awesome" post on a film blog. In my defence, it did take me over four months to get here, but I will try to get this out of the way as quickly as possible.

Similar to my RAGING BULL post a while ago, I think the easiest way to do this is just to post a few pictures of how beautiful this film is:

I could go into a whole thing about depth of field and American mythmaking, but the truth is, all of those reasons are secondary to why CITIZEN KANE is a classic.

CITIZEN KANE is a classic because it fucks with the most powerful man in the world and gets away with it. It would be like if next week's HAWAII FIVE-O was about Scott Caan, that cunning investigator of human nature, opening a cold case about a missing kid, only to realize that the kid became a drug runner, fled the island, and grew up to become the President of the United States. That's crazy, possibly litigious (although Rupert Murdoch, that Kane of our times, is looking into it), and would never be allowed to happen. But somehow CITIZEN KANE did happen.

And RKO 281, a made-for-HBO movie, makes the story of how CITIZEN KANE came to be extremely compelling. Liev Schreiber plays Orson Welles, and unlike his recent performance in SALT, he appears to be awake during almost all of the scenes of the film. He turns in an actual performance that appears to bring depth and emotion to a human character. His Welles is alternately proud, brilliant, self-conscious, and obsessed with his legacy. It's actually fairly impressive work for any actor, but for Liev, it's particularly surprising.

James Cromwell is on the flipside of this coin as William Randolph Hearst, the publishing magnate that the character of Kane was supposedly based on, and the man who tried to destroy the film. It's quite a sympathetic portrayal, which is surprising, given the power and influence he wielded. John Malkovich turns in a great performance as the similarly-surnamed Herman Mankiewicz, the forgotten man in all of CITIZEN KANE's greatness, and Roy Scheider shows up as the studio boss of RKO. All in all, it's a swell cast. The script moves along at a nice pace and things never feel too biopic-y.

Oh, and did I mention that Tony Scott was an Executive Producer on this? That's how he makes arguably the greatest film of all time even better.

A TSOF Exclusive: The Secret of Michael Bay (THE ROCK Review)

2010-09-25T16:22:00.008-04:00

First off, let me apologize for the lengthy time between reviews. You may have heard that I was absolutely swamped at work, but that was just misinformation I spread to keep the hounds off my tail. Secretly, I've been working on a piece of investigative journalism so explosive it might blow the lid off the Internet. That's right: a lidless Internet. Imagine.

For years, Michael Bay has been a favourite whipping boy of the lidded Net, with his cocaine-fuelled, spatially-confusing, character-less messes like BAD BOYS, PEARL HARBOR, and THE ISLAND. But there was always one film that could seemingly redeem Mr. Bay from any of these disasters: THE ROCK.

THE ROCK may well be a masterpiece (or at least the folks at Criterion seem to think so), but one was forced to wonder how a man who could construct moments like this could also be responsible for dreck like this. Thanks to my sources in the greater Cali area, I present you with damning proof of how THE ROCK was possible, and perhaps why he has never risen to such heights again:

THE EXPENDABLES befuddles the mind

2010-09-25T14:16:00.004-04:00

Once upon a time, Sylvester Stallone was nominated for an Academy Award for screenwriting.

This is a scene from THE EXPENDABLES.

Reconcile those two facts, and get back to me. I'm still working on it.

$20,000 Worth of Film Theory Classes Finally Pay Off: My Combined Review of STEP UP 3D and PIRANHA 3D

2010-09-04T22:53:00.011-04:00

I don't mind putting words in the mouths of dead men, even if it's a little dangerous, but I feel pretty safe in saying that if Marshall McLuhan was alive today, he'd be losing his shit over PIRANHA 3D. And be tweeting things like "OMGz, @STEP UP 3D ttly rocked my wrld!"

Well, I don't know if he'd be tweeting. The man who once wrote a whole book essentially about how lightbulbs are awesome would probably deplore the 140-character limit. But he'd definitely be buying multiple $20 tickets and gushing to his friends about how his new favourite form of representation was no longer 40-watt tungsten, but 3D film.

Let's back up a minute and let me drop a little media theory knowledge on y'all, just to make sure we're on the same page. McLuhan is known most famously for his declaration that "the medium is the message", a theory that postulates that the specific qualities of a form of representation is what is actually imparted to its audience, rather than any message embodied in the representation. The content is not actually what is being passed on to the viewer - it's the way through which we experience it. This means that supposedly corrupting TV shows are actually the same as such wholesome fare as SEVENTH HEAVEN - they're really imparting the same social programming on the viewer, because we are forced to experience it through the same way.

So if the medium is the message, than PIRANHA 3D and STEP UP 3D are saying the exact same thing: sit down, shut up, and look at these tits wobbling in your face. This is what you came here for.

PIRANHA 3D is pure entertainment, a film that is not concerned with trifling matters like gravity or the relationship between oxygen and the human brain. If it gets in the way of entertaining you, then it can go to hell. That's why there's a three-minute naked underwater ballet scene, Christopher Lloyd shouting every line in his best Doc Brown voice, and Jerry O'Connell screaming "They ate my dick! They ate my dick!" There's no delusions of grandeur here, no attempt to portray some sort of human truth, just a never-ending drive to put crazier and crazier things on screen.

This may be even more true for STEP UP 3D, whose quest for pure entertainment leads it to completely disregard any attempt at coherent storytelling in favour of moving as quickly as possible from jaw-dropping dance number to jaw-dropping laser-emitting-TRON-suit dance number. I'm pretty sure I heard the line, "You and your trust fund can't stop us!" at one point, and while some might see this as lazy scripting, it's actually an attempt to just move to the next viscerally thrilling spin move as quickly as possible. With this line, there's no need for me to see the trust fund kid doing something evil, I already know he's evil because he has been identified as a trust fund kid. Done. Now show me somebody fly through the air while grabbing their crotch. Then show me two people doing it. Then show me a whole crew of people doing it while lasers shoot off their backs and directly into my eyeballs.

The form of 3D is something that has been debated for quite a while now. Some filmmakers are trying to convince us that 3D can be used to accentuate storytelling, draw an audience deeper into the world. CORALINE is a fine modern example of this. These are usually the same crowds that bemoan shots of yo-yos flying towards the camera as "gimmicky" and "trite".

Here's a newsflash, bitches: 3D is a gimmick.

If you want to tell a story in a visual medium, we've got this awesome thing called two-dimensional films. Make one of those. But if I want to see a piranha eat Jerry O'Connell's dick, you better believe I want that dick floating towards me, eighty feet tall and inches from my face. Only then will I truly feel the horror of what's happening. And if you're making a horny-teens-on-spring-break movie, you better believe I'd like those wet t-shirt contests right in front of my eyes while Eli Roth calls breasts "Danny Devitos" in the rear channel speakers. If you're making a movie about the human body in motion, then you should absolutely use all the dimensions available to you. And if you're smart, you'll give me only the barest framework of a story to hang your dance choreography on. I don't give a shit about your story - I'm here for the experience.

The medium is the message. And 3D is telling us how visceral we are.

THE LAST LOVECRAFT: a perfect excuse to work in a bunch of fish puns

2010-08-30T14:07:00.005-04:00

This year's Toronto After Dark festival played host to a variety of crazy movies, most notably THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE. And while I was nowhere near brave enough to enter a world of terrifying German surgery, I did score some free passes to the opening night film, THE LAST LOVECRAFT.

For the first few minutes, I was terribly worried that this was going to be an overwrought RELIC HUNTER episode, complete with hooded villains, questionable effects work, and middle-aged actors trying way too hard to justify their lifetime of shitty work (and the word "relic" being thrown around way, way too often). And while elements of The Carrere Effect remained throughout the entirety of the film, its charm ultimately won me over.

The basic setup is that the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft was actually a warning of real dangers, and that a group of nerds, including the last descendant of Lovecraft, have to band together to save the world from Cthulhu, the sea-dwelling Megatron of Lovecraftian fiction. With this kind of material and this kind of a budget, there's bound to be some problems with the film. The baddies in the film are all clearly wearing masks, and some of the effects work is, well, fishy, but the script knows what its strengths are and plays to them, principally keeping the dynamic between the nerds front and center.

The other key is that THE LAST LOVECRAFT never takes itself too seriously. While it isn't an outright comedy, the film's tongue is never too far from its cheek (although, really, how far could a tongue get from its corresponding cheek?) Anyway, there's quite a few laughs thrown into the proceedings, which helps when the film gets dragged down by it's plot.

THE LAST LOVECRAFT just picked up a distribution deal, so there's a chance that you might see it in a DVD bargain bin sometime soon. If it's a $5 and Under bin, I'd say go ahead and pick it up. There's enough there for you to enjoy, and like the 2003 Florida Marlins, it just might surprise you.

Review: Fin.

DINER is one of my all-time favourites

2010-08-27T14:21:00.007-04:00

When you press play on the DINER DVD, you're subjected to a five-minute introduction to the film by the cast and crew. It's incredibly smug and arrogant, a boast of the film's timelessness and quality. The first time I watched the film, I almost turned it off right after Steve Guttenberg, that fine purveyor of quality products, guaranteed me that I would love the film.

But if you manage to make it past this incredibly crass piece of promotional fluff, you'll find a wonderful piece of personal filmmaking that backs up all its talk. DINER is an exceptional film, something that feels so true to its characters that they cease to be characters. The basic set-up is that it's the last week of the 1950's as a group of old friends re-unite for their friend's wedding on New Year's Eve.

Barry Levinson's script is impeccably crafted, witty and personal and seeped in period details that makes me feel nostalgic for an era that I wasn't even remotely close to alive for. The film is saturated with a love for the innocence of the fifties, and a faint feeling of dread for the coming turbulence of the sixties hangs over everything. I think what makes the film so accessible is that it's actually about the past, about the memories that make us who we are, a theme Levinson further explored in the great LIBERTY HEIGHTS. Levinson is able to tap in to our fondness for the past, and DINER feels like hearing your grandfather tell you How It Really Was.

I watch DINER at least once a year, and I always see new things in it, and relate to it differently as I mature. My relationships with the characters are always in flux, and I see pieces of myself and my friends in the dynamics of the film. What never changes is my love for the dialogue-heavy script, which revels in the art of conversation, basks in the power of words.

The cast of DINER is the other great strength of the film, bringing a depth and realism to the characters that isn't necessarily on the page. Kevin Bacon gives the best non-Paul Veerhoven performance of his career as the troubled alcoholic fuck-up Fenwick, a loyal friend whose simmering anger belies his goof personality. Tim Daly (yes, the ill-advised remake of The Fugitive's Tim Daly) brings a lot of the heart to the film, as Billy, the friend whose ambition has taken him away from home, but is back for the wedding and another purpose. Daniel Stern is a revelation, playing a man-child trapped in marriage and avoiding any ... y'know, Daniel Stern-ness. Guttenberg's persona has never been utilized better than in this film. Paul Reiser is hilarious. And it's amazing to see what Mickey Rourke can do with a role when he's actually trying.

I'm curious if any of the ladies out there share my love of DINER. The most memorable scenes of the film exist in a strange sexual ethics zone, and how the men relate to it individually. For me, so much of the film's power is in it's depiction of male friendships, in the things that are said and unsaid, what is public and what is left private. I think it's a pitch-perfect depiction of the boundaries of those friendships, and it hits me in a deeply personal way.

But I want to hit that DVD intro in the balls.

THE IMMACULATE CONCEPTION OF LITTLE DIZZLE vs. Lil' Dizzy

2010-08-25T03:20:00.003-04:00

I had a day off yesterday. This is what I did with it.

BLACK DYNAMITE and the Trial of Mike Myers

2010-08-22T19:47:00.006-04:00

I think we can all agree that, in general, the genre of spoof film is in a tired state. The Scary Movie series (the definition of tired). Meet the Spartans (yes, that is THE WIRE and Wu-Tang alum Method Man). Not Another _____ Movie (which is one of the first series to start the trend of having the title mimic your reaction to finding out about it). Not since I watched a massive load of ejaculate plaster Anna Faris to a ceiling while sitting next to my dad have I felt so ashamed to watch a spoof. And we all know who to blame. It may not be pleasant to turn on one of our own, but it's something we have to do. Mr. Michael Meyers, please step to the stand.

Mr. Myers, you have been called here today to be judged. Not so much for what you've done, but more for what you haven't done. But we'll get to that in a moment.

But first, let me set the scene of the crime: the summer of 1997. A muggy summer, the kind of heat that gets into a man's soul; makes him crazy, drives him to the dark, lonely corners of his mind. Not to say your intentions were anything but pure when you released AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY into the world that fateful summer, but as we have so often seen in our history, the noblest of intentions have a way of twisting us, perverting us from what we started as.

Now, I'll admit it: I liked your spoof. You distilled the essence of Bondian intrigues and combined it with terrifying puns, Seth Green at his wise-assiest, and Elizabeth Hurley. In my defense, I was eleven years old. I had just finished writing a James Bond movie with my brother where the main villain had swords for arms and was called Dangerhands (still awesome, IMHO) But I'm not on trial here, Myers, you are!

No one could really blame you when you released the sequel. I mean, you hadn't touched on the outrageousness of hollowed-out volcano bases and midget henchmen yet. So I got it. The commentary wasn't complete yet. But there were also a few, um, troubling inclusions. I don't know what the fuck Fat Bastard was supposed to comment on, but every single time I think of him I want to strap you to the electric chair myself and throw the switch.

But the third one ... well, to be honest. I don't remember much about the third one. Whether it was through the rarely-heard-about benefits of some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder, or a conscious attempt on my part to subjugate the memories of the film through sheer willpower, everything about those ninety minutes remains gauzy. I do remember you co-opted cameos from Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, and Britney Spears, in the sure-fire mark of a tapped-out well of ideas. Oh God, Beyoncé was in it too, wasn't she? Jesus Christ, the memories are coming back...

The less mentioned about The Love Guru, the better. For everyone. That list looks like the goddamned docket for a Nuremberg courtroom in 1945.

Mr. Myers, the charges are simple: you ruined the spoof film. And you have not apologized.

So when I see hilarious scenes like this in a movie like BLACK DYNAMITE, there's a sour after-taste. I want to think about Zucker-Abrams-Zucker and the awesomeness of a spoof film with a point and story of it's own, but I can't help but flash back to this kind of shit.

Mr. Myers, all you have to do is apologize. And then maybe we'll get into reparations. In the meantime, we'll always have Mel Brooks.

If I say INSOMNIA is nowhere near Robin Williams' worst film, am I actually saying anything?

2010-08-16T14:13:00.010-04:00

Do you ever have those moments where memory plays tricks on you? Where you change the shape of a room or the color of a car? Or maybe the end of a movie?

I've done it twice now - a few years ago, I could have sworn CASABLANCA's last shot of Ingrid Bergman was of her looking tearfully out an airplane window at Humphrey Bogart, but then I saw Alfred Hitchcock's NOTORIOUS again and realized I had added a shot from that film into my memory of CASABLANCA. And I just realized I did it with INSOMNIA, too.

My recollections of INSOMNIA were very fuzzy, but I hadn't realized just how fuzzy they were until Nicky Katt showed up and started making with the awesome (as he so often does). For years, I had operated under the assumption that the conclusion of the film was a nicely tied bow that linked two separate cases together under Robin Williams' guilt.

Turns out, that completely doesn't happen. At all. There isn't even a second case. So either there was some sort of unfortunate BLOOD WORK-related crossed-wire-in-my-mind thing, or I'm a fucking idiot.

It's still not a great film, or even a good one, really, but it's nowhere near the travesty I remember it being. Hilary Swank is given a pretty thankless role and she does very little with it, but Pacino has some nice moments here that, again, I didn't remember. He plays a nicely understated guilt through most of the film that is especially effective when you compare it against his more standard scream-loudly-and-wave-my-arms approach. The examination of a cop under investigation by internal affairs feels real and well-researched, as does the actual detective work in the film.

The real problem with the film is, sadly, Williams. Now, I love HOOK as much as the next man. I do not love THE FINAL CUT or ONE HOUR PHOTO. He's just not well-suited to playing creepy. There's too much cultural baggage for him to shake. He's the goddamn Genie, for Christ's sake. But even if we purposely deprived a child of such classics as ALADDIN, JUMANJI, and MRS. DOUBTFIRE in some sort of cruel social experiment, that poor, damaged child still wouldn't believe Robin Williams as a credible foil to Pacino. From the very first moment Williams comes on screen, we know what the end game will be. Williams might weaken Pacino, chip away at him, but in the end, there is no doubt about who the winner will be. The film steadily trails off from the point his character is introduced, which is unfortunate, as his relationship to Pacino is really the film's raison d'être.

Has anyone seen the Swedish original? Is it worth checking out? If it is, there might be a better option than just trying to forget this version - or imagine a version where Jeff Daniels plays the Williams role.

BABIES is the Justin Bieber of movies

2010-08-15T21:12:00.006-04:00

Do you remember where you were when you first heard of Justin Bieber?

My memory is particularly vivid, because it's also when I realized the world was not the one I used to know. When Usher came in to that eleven year-old's party and gave him props, I realized a torch was perhaps literally (given Usher's history of STDs) being passed, and that I belonged to those who no longer carried the torch (or gonorrhea).

So away with our destroyers (of sexual virtue)! They have no place within our tween world. But this new world carries with it disturbing questions and moral quagmires of its own. Like is Justin Bieber actually a robot? And what is he hiding behind those bangs?

All of this brings me to BABIES, which is terrifyingly hypnotic in much the same way Bieber is. You're never really sure if you're watching because you're fascinated by what's happening, or wondering why you're fascinated by what's happening.

The tagline for the film is "Everybody loves babies", which has to stand as one of the laziest advertising attempts I've ever seen. I was worried this was going to be the film equivalent of an eating-Rolo-ice-cream-out-of-the-tub YouTube cute binge, complete with kittens, orphans, and ridiculously adorable renditions of "Tomorrow".

And while BABIES doesn't have any hits from the Annie soundtrack, it does coast an awful lot on the cuteness of babies doing baby stuff. But there's also some really interesting stuff about competition, survival, and the essence of humanity in there - but I might be reading too much into it. The film is like a fascinating semiotic exercise, where you're constantly debating the meaning of every little gesture and look.

Which brings me back to Bieber. I'm never really sure if I'm looking at a savvy scruple-less media manipulator or an innocent dreamboat, but I do know I'm watching.

Fascinated.

MYSTERY TEAM is the future of cinema (kinda)

2010-08-10T23:25:00.007-04:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah, INCEPTION is mind-blowing. AVATAR will keep us fucking around with 3D for the next decade or so. But when we're talking about the future of cinema, any serious discussion will have to include MYSTERY TEAM.

The brainchild of Derrick Comedy, an online comedy troupe who have brought us such viral classics as Girls Are Not To Be Trusted, Bro Rape, and this hilariously crass send-up of the National Spelling Bee, MYSTERY TEAM is a charming film with no budget and a ton of very, very funny ideas. The basic hook is a team of kid detectives have grown up without ever leaving the whole kid detective-thing behind. They don't swear. They charge a dime for a case. But when a murder case falls in their lap, the kids have to solve the case, get the girl, and maybe grow up a little bit.

If I were Peter Travers, I would paraphrase the EPK synopsis like I just did, and then say things like "MYSTERY TEAM is fall-down funny!" and "deliciously warped!", but I'm not trying to get on a box, so fuck that guy.

But MYSTERY TEAM is truly fall-down funny, and marks the emergence of a true talent with Donald Glover. This kid is blowing up - he's written, starred in, or scored three of the funniest network shows in recent memory, he's self-producing and releasing killer hip-hop albums ("I can Say Anything, call me John Cusack / keep my dick wetter than the bottom of a cruise ship"), and he recently launched a Spider-Man petition that cleverly got people talking about the role of race in comic books - not bad for a guy who probably has to put up with every third person he meets asking him for PREDATOR 2 merch.

But here, Glover is just part of a devastating ensemble that completely gets the material (probably because most of them helped write it). The film is playing with the conventions of all those Encyclopedia Brown-Hardy Boys-Nancy Drew novels of our childhood, and combining them with coke dealers, strip clubs, and horrifying diarrhea jokes. The result is something that's, well, deliciously warped, that feels almost infinitely re-watchable.

The real drawbacks of the film are with it's obvious budget (or lack thereof), which occasionally gives the film a cheap feel. Which brings me back to that whole "future of cinema" thing. In a world where the Old Spice guy is getting an NBC show and The Whitest Kids U Know are on basic cable, we've all become casting directors, with the web as our version of headshots, and YouTube as our generation's casting couch.

And we've done a hell of a job with MYSTERY TEAM. Now we just need to get them some money.

CRANK had too much to drank

2010-08-09T21:14:00.006-04:00

Five minutes into CRANK, it was so blatantly clear that I was dealing with a wannabe DOMINO clone that I began to wonder how I could write this review. I mean, how could I express how bored I was with most of CRANK, but defend DOMINO, my favourite film of the last decade? Everything was so similar, from the over-saturated visual style to the zany side characters to the attempt to make the story seem like a half-remembered nightmare through a cracked mirror of regret, that I felt helpless to like one and not the other.

To conquer these problems, I came up with the following proof:

Using the universally-accepted equation that:

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES II: THE SECRET OF THE OOZE > everything

we might then surmise that:

dudes (or mutated amphibians) with handheld weapons > other dudes/mutated amphibians/Power Rangers

but a more accurate surmise would be that:

nunchucks > everything.

Observation: The film DOMINO has several scenes with nunchucks.

Observation Two: The film CRANK has zero scenes with nunchucks.

Conclusion: I drew it:

A Deliriously Infatuated Love Letter to THE MUMMY (1999)

2010-08-07T22:17:00.006-04:00

Dearest THE MUMMY (1999):

Oh, how I missed you. It had been too long since I saw your Egyptologist-melting, fortune-hunter-dissolving, scarab-beetle-eating beauty.

I still remember our first time - the Erin Mills Town Centre Cineplex, long since closed down and turned into an Old Navy, on Canada Day, 1999. I'll be honest, I only remember it was July 1 because we had to go to a family event afterward, but it was still special because of you. I don't remember what we ate that day, or what set of directions my family argued about to make conversation (although it probably went something like this: "Who takes the 407? What are you, some sort of a Spanish consortium economic booster?"). No, my memories of that day are all about you - of Brendan Fraser shooting two pistols and makin' with the quips, of Rachel Weisz's stunning eyes and deadpan comic timing, of your stunning effects. It was new, it was beautiful, and it was scary.

Yeah, I'll admit it, you scared me. But I think what we shared that day would make anyone a little scared. You got inside me, THE MUMMY (1999). You changed me. I know this might be a little surprising to you. I know I tried to play it cool, treat you like I treated any other film. Or did you see right through my charade? Did you see how I got a little obsessive, daydreaming about you that whole summer, playing your video game and listening to your score?

Now, I probably should have realized that summer lovin' couldn't last. But I didn't see GREASE for another two years. We were both young, THE MUMMY (1999). Let's not pretend we were smarter than we were. Admittedly, our relationship soured at times. There was that sequel that barely deserved your name, and that time the man who played your titular character turned in the laziest guest spot in ALIAS' notorious history of lazy guest spots. Then there was that sorta-prequel with that guy from THE TOOTH FAIRY and then, of course, the infamous VAN HELSING "break". Oded Fehr did RESIDENT EVIL 2. And then there was that final sequel. I think I lost you, THE MUMMY (1999). I think I lost what I loved about you.

I know it's a cliché, THE MUMMY (1999), but I think those tough times might have just made us stronger. Because when I saw you the other day, I saw you. I mean, really saw you. I saw the obvious green screen work, and the horrifying beginnings of CGI animation. I saw the questionable ethnic stereotypes and the way you basically steal things from much better movies.

And I don't care.

Those aren't ugly green fuzzy halos around your actors' heads: they're love-green-screen-lines. You're not a pale imitation of others: you're full of homages to other classic beauties, and you make it your own. And if someone said that your effects weren't hot, I'd say they're cute.

I hope you can forgive me for ignoring you on my shelf for so long, THE MUMMY (1999). I know I've forgiven you for the six hours of MUMMY-related films I've been forced to sit through, and the considerably longer amount of time it's taken to remove any tainted memories those films have left in my mind about your purity.

So, since no love letter is complete without some bad poetry, I'd like to present you with some lines from one of our great poets, who can truly express my feelings. Hear Cassie's words, THE MUMMY (1999), and try to ignore the strip-club favourite undertones:

It's me and you, now

I've been waiting

Think I wanna make that move, now

Baby, tell me if you like it.

It's me and you, now

I've been waiting.

Death Is Only The Beginning,

Brandon

THE KING OF KONG may, one day, make a great documentary

2010-08-07T19:33:00.011-04:00

What makes a great documentary? Is it the question of access, of gaining interviews with all the principal players? Is it how close the documentarian can get to their subjects, a question of intimacy? Or one of scope, examining all the facets of a subject? I think THE KING OF KONG: A FISTFUL OF QUARTERS shows that what separates the good from the great is the ending.

Like Brian Cox (as Robert McKee in the brilliant ADAPTATION) would say, "Wow them in the end, and you've got a hit. You can have flaws, problems, but wow them in the end." The problem with THE KING OF KONG is that the film doesn't have an ending. I mean, it ends, but it doesn't conclude. The story is still ongoing, still in need of documentation, and by no means does the story feel like it's over.

It's pretty straight-up quest movie, as the innocent everyman Steve Wiebe fights to achieve supremacy in the world of Donkey Kong and beat the smug and conceited world champion, Billy Mitchell. There's several twists and turns presented in the film, as Wiebe comes at the throne several times and thinks he wins, only to not be recognized, or be disqualified, or have Mitchell snatch the title right back.

The first half of the film is great, character-driven stuff, as we're presented with the cause of the conflict and the backstory of the main two guys, but as the film goes on, it becomes more obsessive about documenting the events and the scores. And while that may be interesting in that it seems to mirror Wiebe's character as his life becomes increasingly about beating Mitchell and nothing else, I definitely felt like the movie was losing focus.

My favourite documentary is HOOP DREAMS, a film that took over a decade to film and edit. It must have been infinitely infuriating for the filmmakers to film for years, never knowing when the film would be fit to be finished. They managed to find an ending to that film that was narratively satisfying, while still allowing for the main characters' stories to progress. I hope this movie is re-edited in ten years, allowing for a clearer perspective of what was truly important to the story of these two men.

Until then, THE KING OF KONG will merely be a good doc, not a great one.

61* and the Battered Image of Billy Crystal

2010-08-06T21:19:00.009-04:00

Y'know, I try not to hate on people. I generally try to give people like 50 Cent and Kristen Stewart the benefit of the doubt. But one could be forgiven for thinking that Billy Crystal is the cinematic Antichrist.

ANALYZE THAT

THE ADVENTURES OF ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE

FATHER'S DAY

These films stand like demonic, blood-crying statues over the graveyard of a once-promising career. I would defy you to sit through any of those trailers, let alone mount some kind of defence for the hours of work some innocent carpenter put into making sets, or a craft services person put into slicing bagels, to help create these monstrosities. But then again, the man brought us some of the finest movie magic of the 1980s, from WHEN HARRY MET SALLY to THE PRINCESS BRIDE to his cameo in THIS IS SPINAL TAP (all Rob Reiner films, interestingly enough).

Maybe Reiner's got nothing to do with it, or maybe he just had a bad decade, because his work in 2001's 61* is fantastic. Crystal directs this period piece about a hallowed era in American sports history, the fall of Babe Ruth's hallowed single-season home run record to fellow Yankee Roger Maris. Thomas "I Just Want My Kids Back" Jane plays Mickey Mantle, the great American hero, and Barry Pepper plays the cold, professional Maris, whose chase of Ruth's record makes him as notorious as it does famous.

When a sport like baseball is at its best, it reveals something about the human spirit, about our tenacity, our refusal to accept defeat. As part of the game, athletes become symbols rather than individuals, and while there is a certain nobility to this mythmaking, it can also be a ruthless and uncaring process.

Crystal, the director, completely understands this, even if his own career path as an actor seems to prove the opposite. The film is fascinated by the construction of a media image, about what the public wants to see and how the public is fed what it craves (side note: no one "craved" to see ANALYZE THAT, Billy). It's a refreshing perspective for a baseball movie, a genre that often gets caught up in romanticizing the fairest game and finding poetry in its heroes.

Not to say that I dislike those kinds of films. In fact, every year around the start of baseball season, I brush off my copies of ROOKIE OF THE YEAR, LITTLE BIG LEAGUE, and THE SANDLOT and sit in child-like joy at the purity of America's pastime. But this is a baseball movie more in the tradition of EIGHT MEN OUT or COBB, the ones that show us the dark edges of baseball.

Honestly, 61* is probably only of interest to baseball enthusiasts anyway, so if you came this far for some sort of film criticism, or to watch me take another shot at Billy Crystal, you could probably just skip down to the last line of the review. But if you're still with me here, let's get into some baseball talk.

The film is framed around Mark McGwire's race to beat Maris' record, essentially told in flashback, but this choice unintentionally adds a really interesting layer to the film's questions about why there was such a backlash against Maris attempting to break Ruth's record. With McGwire's name tarnished in the hearts of millions of fans since his steroids non-admission admission, there's an implicit question being asked about how pure any of our heroes are. Ruth was certainly no saint himself, adopting a child that he had fathered with another woman with his wife, and there are widespread accusations that amphetamines were a common part of the game back in his day. History has continued to chip away at the images of the heroes of the game, and will continue to do so.

On that note, I just remembered that Billy Crystal is in THE TOOTH FAIRY. 'Nuff said.

GAME OVER: KASPAROV AND THE MACHINE redeems the phrase from Bill Paxton's terrible performance in ALIENS

2010-08-05T14:16:00.011-04:00

I'm currently listening to Xzibit's Man vs. Machine album (which features two songs from the DOMINO soundtrack!), so it seems appropriate to talk about a great little doc I saw a few days ago entitled GAME OVER: KASPAROV AND THE MACHINE.

And while Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov is no Xzibit, he's still a compelling figure who makes for a great documentary.

The film traces Kasparov's rise from Azerbaijani boy genius to "the greatest player in the history of chess", but it's primarily interested in Kasparov's highly publicized loss to Deep Blue, the IBM supercomputer that defeated him in 1997. I remember hearing something about it when I was in elementary school, and about how this was basically the beginning of Skynet, but I didn't pay a lot of attention to it. I sucked at chess. The school computers beat me all the time, and I had learned long ago that they were much smarter than me. I had long ago accepted that it was a matter of time before a muscle-coated exoskeleton knocked on my door, asked "Brandon Forsyth?", and blew me away with a double-barreled shotgun. Some Russian guy losing a chess game to a computer didn't seem to be a big deal.

Popping the film in, I was worried that this was going to be a dry, "Then Deep Blue moved a rook to C6" recreation of the match, but I needn't have worried. This is a film rooted in conspiracy film conventions, as Kasparov attempts to persuade us that IBM rigged the match and used human tampering to prevent it from falling into predictable patterns. There's a great whispered voice-over that opens the film talking about how IBM's stock rose rapidly after their defeat of Kasparov, and this perfectly sets up the tone of the film. There's a lot of camera flashes, tilted angles, and brooding close-ups of darting eyes, and the film succeeds at making these matches an exhilarating showdown of maneuvers on and off the board, with plenty of behind-the-scenes intrigue.

Occasionally the film reaches a little too far, especially in finding ways to dramatize the events, with a lot of repeated footage and the same set of stylized tricks. There's only so many times that a lingering shot on Deep Blue's unfeeling eye cut against Kasparov's eyes staring back can express something about the match. There's also an ill-advised attempt to tie in footage of The Turk, a chess-playing automaton from the 1800s that was revealed as a human-operated hoax.

There's not a lot of actual evidence presented to support Kasparov's claims, other than the fact that he crushed Deep Blue in the first match before drawing or losing the next five, but the film actually becomes more about paranoia and ego than about if the match was rigged. It's clear to see that Kasparov truly cannot believe that the computer beat him, and it's fascinating watching such a methodical mind unravel on camera. He simply cannot accept even the possibility that the computer beat him, and his search for answers provides a fascinating commentary on the man vs. machine conflict that drives the film. The frailty of the human mind and our self-limitations are what the film is actually concerned with. It's stressed several times that Kasparov defeated himself, with people describing the final match as "a mental breakdown" and "implosion".

GAME OVER: KASPAROV AND THE MACHINE is a fascinating document about how even the smartest human mind is limited by its humanity. Oh, and Kasparov should totally listen to the Dr. Dre song "What's the Difference" featuring Xzibit. I think he'd like it.

AIR FORCE ONE is the reason I love CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

2010-08-04T23:04:00.011-04:00

I once wrote that CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER was "like a super-comfortable blanket filled with secret wars, double-crossing drug lords, and Willem Dafoe." I stand by that. It's one of my favourite films, a unique cocktail of political dirty tricks, paramilitary operations, and the afore-mentioned Dafoe (often bedecked in a variety of amusing Panama hats and being creepy), which appeals directly to my interests. But my love for this hallowed piece of blockbuster cinema has a disturbing backstory: at first, I never really understood it.

Consider the following exchange of dialogue from the film:

RITTER: You are *such* a Boy Scout! You see everything in black-and-white.

JACK: No! No! No! Not black-and-white, Ritter! Right and wrong!

For years I never understood this line. I mean, did Jack not understand that black and white represented right and wrong? I was 13 the first time I saw it, and it seemed pretty clear to me. I could tell cool shit was going on here, but this line always puzzled me. And, as has so frequently happened, a late night TBS viewing of AIR FORCE ONE came to my rescue.

You see, before AIR FORCE ONE came into my life and exposed me to the wonders of Gary Oldman attempting to play a Chechnyan, I had always thought of Harrison Ford as the Scoundrel - Han Solo and Indiana Jones. Even that guy from American Graffiti was kind of a charming jerk. But when I saw AIR FORCE ONE, that all changed.

It had honestly never occurred to me that Harrison Ford might be able to play a square-jawed moral simpleton until this moment. Then it all became clear to me: CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER was actually about obfuscation.

Consider this line, when Dafoe learns of the codename for the mission:

CLARK: "Reciprocity." That's a clever name for it. Revenge is a very, very, very dangerous motivation.

Both this line and the one that so confused me are actually about doublespeak - and politics. About using a euphemism instead of a truth. About saying one thing and meaning another. About saying nothing. When Ritter talks about "black and white", he doesn't actually mean anything - the words have no real meaning to him. And Harrison Ford is reminding him what they're actually talking about.

I'll be honest, I'm not really sure how I missed this. I mean, the poster has Ford literally draped in an American flag next to the words, "Truth Needs A Soldier". Sure, it's corny, it's naïve, it's on the nose, but really, it's kind of beautiful.

Plus, it ends with a character screaming at the President while calling him "sir". Deal with it, America. You're beautiful and a little stupid.

An Open Letter to Topher Grace (PREDATORS Review)

2010-07-29T23:27:00.007-04:00

Hi Topher Grace!

How ya doin' buddy? It's been a while. Man, remember when we used to hang out on THAT '70'S SHOW? Those were good times. Remember when people used to say shortening your name from Christopher to Topher was fucking retarded? And why couldn't you be like every other Christopher on the planet and go by Chris? You stuck to your guns on that one, and you sure showed them wrong, bud. Wow. Talk about a nostalgia trip. Probably one of those things that's best left in the past, to be honest, but hey, we had fun while it happened, right?

But then, hey, remember when you pulled that amorality-of-youth thing in Steven Soderbergh's TRAFFIC? That was freaking awesome, dude. Really a game-changer, to be honest. I don't think anyone was expecting Eric Foreman to be ... well, such a dick. But I mean that in a good way. You were going to be one of the young up and coming actors to watch, along with your TRAFFIC co-star, Erika Christensen, who promptly went and made SWIMFAN, THE BANGER SISTERS, and FLIGHTPLAN (making this the second worst trio of films made by an actor named Christensen).

You played it smart, though - you kept on good terms with Soderbergh and pulled out hilarious cameos in OCEAN'S ELEVEN and OCEAN'S TWELVE. And I've never seen P.S., but apparently you were really good in that, too. I'll be honest, IN GOOD COMPANY looked like it was shit, but hey, old people love Dennis Quaid, right? I guess it could have been a smart career move.

But look man, the real reason I wanted to talk to you today was the last couple of films you've done. I don't really want to get into SPIDER-MAN 3 - I think the Internet was pretty much created to hate that movie, and enough time has been spent on talking about why it was so bad - but suffice it to say, while it may not be all your fault, you did nothing to help matters. Deciding to play Eddie Brock/Venom as a snivelling whiner who relishes his newfound power was just a little on the acne-tipped nose. And hey, I know it couldn't have been your idea to have the Venom mask coming off all the time, but did you have to be sneering every time it did?

I'm sorry man, I promised I wasn't going to do this. You know I hate to hit you baby, so don't make me. It's just - you helped ruin Spider-Man. That's pretty capital, sir. And yeah, I know I gave you the cold shoulder after that, but I figured that was probably for the best. I was just giving us a little break, so we could let time go to work and heal those wounds.

But I never gave up on you. I knew you could return to the glory of Foremans-and-drug-fiends-past. So when I heard you were starring in the Robert Rodriguez-scripted PREDATORS, I got excited. Well, maybe not excited. But intrigued, definitely intrigued. I'm almost ashamed to admit that I thought, "Hey, it's been a couple of years - people change, right?"

Well, you screwed me on that one, Grace. Again, I know you can't be completely to blame for PREDATORS' third act, but damn, do you do nothing to stop its train wreck. For the first hour or so, Rodriguez had actually managed to convince me he was trying to do a true sequel to the ruthless and uncompromising pace of the original PREDATOR. And I thought you were trying to do something new with the comedic support role.

But oh no, y'all had to go and decide to add DEXTER to the world of Predator. Hey, here's a funny story: no one, in the history of the world since PREDATOR came out, has watched PREDATOR and thought, "Yeah, OK I guess. What really would have taken this to classic-level status was a sneaky serial-killer type" or watched DEXTER and thought, "Yeah, along with some more of the overly-written narration, what if Dexter teamed up with some aliens to hunt people?"

NO.

You got it all wrong.

So, Grace, let me leave you with this parting rhyming couplet:

Topher/

It's over.

And your name is fucking Chris.

THE RULES OF ATTRACTION - get ready for the tangential Tony Scott reference!

2010-07-28T19:38:00.011-04:00

Friends, the rumours are true: yes, I own DAWSON'S CREEK: THE COMPLETE COLLECTION. This may not be a shocking revelation, coming so soon after my stunning admission that I've read (and, at times, enjoyed) all the Twilight books, and own (and have not returned) a 50 Cent CD, but it can't be my fault that Kevin Williamson's seminal coming-of-age teen series is an eerie and horrible mirror to my life. It can't be. I had never seen an episode of Dawson's Creek before last year. I never chose to wear the same sweaters as Dawson. I never made my mom buy decorative banners to hang outside our house so that our house would look like Dawson's. And I didn't go to film school only to become disillusioned with filmmaking because that's what Dawson did. It just kinda happened that way. So yes, I watch Dawson's Creek. I watch it in the vague belief that James Vanderbeek is some sort of Kyle Reese-version of me, a warrior of sorts, sent back to our time from the future to warn me away from making horrible life choices.

Which is why watching RULES OF ATTRACTION post-Dawson's Creek was really, really weird for me. I've grown pretty accustomed to seeing James Vanderbeek as an avatar of myself over five seasons or so, so to see him as an "emotional vampire", as he describes himself in the film, was fairly disturbing. It's like watching Kyle Reese rip off his face to expose a glowing red eye and glinty exoskeleton underneath (Editor's Note: this review continues after a two-hour break in which Brandon wrote a totally wicked fanfic where John Connor was forced to kill a terminator with his father's face - which temporarily helped blot out the fact that The Sarah Connor Chronicles ever existed in his mind - Smitty.)

Where was I? RULES OF ATTRACTION, right. It's a dark satire of the college experience, based on a Bret Easton Ellis novel, and adapted and directed by Roger Avary, the man who gave us at least some of TRUE ROMANCE (Tony Scott-approved!), the Bruce Willis section of PULP FICTION, and the script for Zemeckis' BEOWULF (co-written with Neil Gaiman). The man is a talented writer, and what is most admirable about his scripting for this film is while it is unrepentantly bleak, there's an incredible amount of humour going on at the same time. It's wickedly funny, the kind of laughter where you're thinking to yourself, "I shouldn't be laughing at this. I mean, that's Jay Baruchel OD'ing over there - I should feel sad that the kid from PMK is dying."

But you don't. It's impressive that you never really empathize for the characters of THE RULES OF ATTRACTION, but you're still fascinated and amused by them. They're all cold, unfeeling imitations of humanity - Terminators, almost - who treat each other terribly. Essentially it's a film about how awful people can be, but it never becomes so repugnant that you want to turn it off - it's something of a miracle. Vanderbeek is a bit of a heartless bastard, Shannon Sossamon is self-absorbed and deluded, Ian Somerhalder is a pathetic obsessive, and Jessica Biel is playing a straight-up bitch - but they're all kind of funny.

If I have a complaint with THE RULES OF ATTRACTION, it would be that the film is occasionally over-stylized. I can live with the backwards footage that opens the film, and the incredibly fast-paced 'Victor' sequence, as I think they accurately depict a mood that Avary is going for, but things like the split-screen sequence or the heavy-handed scene with Swoosie Kurtz and Faye Dunaway feel like he doesn't trust his actors to convey the emotion or point of the scene (and this from the guy that liked CONVERSATION(S) WITH OTHER WOMEN!) You want the film to calm down at points and just tell a straightforward story without trying to blow your eyeballs off.

Certainly not for everyone, if THE RULES OF ATTRACTION is like Kyle Reese turning into a Terminator, then it comes with the realization that you're a Terminator, too, and now you can play awesome robot games together! Yippee! I love you robot dad!