I recently wrote about Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air, one of my favorite movies from the past few years. I also loved Juno and thought Thank You For Smoking was good for a first time director, if not quite a great film. With his track record, Reitman has become one of my favorite directors, the type whose new movies I look forward to regardless of what they are about. So I was excited to learn that he had teamed up again with Diablo Cody, the screenwriter of Juno, on the film Young Adult. When I learned more about the movie’s story, I became even more interested in seeing it. It is about Mavis Gary, a young adult fiction writer and former high school popular girl, played by Charlize Theron, who returns to her hometown from the big city in order to win back her high school boyfriend and save him from his boring life of marriage and fatherhood. I glanced at a few reviews and interviews with the filmmakers, which all mentioned how unlikable Theron’s character is. This definitely sounded like a movie I would like to see, as I enjoy characters who are not the typical heroes, and I recognize how challenging it is for storytellers to center a plot on a character who does not ordinarily elicit audience sympathy. I went in with high expectations. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, expectations can make a big difference, and often it’s dangerous to expect too much.
As I sat in the theater, I tried to stave off a sense of disappointment. Though I laughed a few times, I was expecting it on a whole to be funnier, a darker version of Juno’s quirky humor. The acting was excellent, and the film was well directed by Reitman, but I felt like the script wasn’t quite solid. Often, the dialogue felt too direct, where the subtext was stated explicitly instead of hinted at. For instance, at one point, Theron’s character, Mavis, says to her parents that she thinks she may be an alcoholic. Would a person in that situation genuinely say that? Another example: she reveals her plan to steal her ex-boyfriend from his wife to another former classmate (the great Patton Oswalt) with whom she has spent an evening drinking. Would she so bluntly say such a thing? By the end of the film, I was glad I had seen it and enjoyed it overall, but left feeling that somehow it wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be.
But then I was surprised. I couldn’t stop thinking about this movie. For a week, the film continued to play out in my mind. I believe I’ve mentioned in previous posts the concept of resonance. That is what I look for in what I would classify as being more substantial works of art. I love a good light comedy or exciting action flick now and again, but they tend to be ephemeral. What I love more is the type of movie that continues to bounce around in my head after it’s over, that I wrestle with or feel continued emotion from, that for whatever reason strikes me like I’m a tuning fork, leaving me vibrating afterward. Young Adult had that effect on me.
What I initially distrusted as being too explicitly stated dialogue, I now see as being far more subtle. Would Mavis tell her parents she thinks she’s an alcoholic? Yes. She has had serious emotional problems for years, which have been largely ignored by both her and her parents. They know that she has a habit of pulling out her own hair, but rather than encouraging her to seek psychiatric help or providing her with that help when she was young, they simply tell her she shouldn’t do that because she has such beautiful hair and it’s a shame to mess it up. This family is clearly dysfunctional and has provided no basis for Mavis to grow into a mature woman, so she has been self-medicating to treat her depression and other problems (she is a narcissist, borderline personality, or maybe even a psychopath). But she wants help. All of her actions seem to have surface motives: she wants to steal her ex-boyfriend back in order to return to the happier days of high school. But those actions have much deeper motives: she wants help. She needs change in her life. So when she tells her parents she thinks she’s an alcoholic, it isn’t merely an observation or a fresh realization—of course she’s an alcoholic—it is her way of asking her parents for a response, to do something to help her, to say something comforting; but her parents simply deny the problem.
The same thing is true when she talks with Patton Oswalt’s character, Matt. On the surface it seems like he is largely a sounding board for her to reveal the details of her plot, but there’s far more going on. She recognizes him as a fellow misfit and is searching for some human connection. Part of the struggle faced by Mavis is that she has never needed to work very hard for surface connections. She is so beautiful that popularity came easily in high school, and since then she has managed to continue coasting on those looks. In one scene, she goes on a date set up by an Internet dating service. The man mentions charity work he has done, and Mavis initially thinks he is complaining the way she would about being stuck in traffic. She starts to sympathize (“That sounds awful”) until she realizes that her date is proud of his accomplishments, so she quickly changes tack. It’s clear her date is far too good for her, but the next morning, he is beside her in bed with his arm wrapped around her body. Mavis can be a terrible person deep down and still get the guy because her surface is so appealing, and because her surface is so appealing, she’s never had to develop anything beneath that surface. But as life wears on and she destroys herself with alcohol, she will not be able to rely on those looks like she used to. When she spends time with Matt, it is due to her desire to reach out and connect with someone, even someone she would consider so far beneath her.
I don’t think it’s a spoiler to state that by the end of the movie, little has changed in Mavis’s life. Many of the reviews I’ve looked at address this point, even suggesting that she is less likable at the end of the movie than she is at the beginning, which may be true. So is this a failure? Do stories need to be centered on a character’s change or growth? I remember when I was a graduate student studying creative writing, students in workshops often attacked short stories for lack of character change, the assumption being that a story requires some change within a character or it is a failed story. I disagreed with this assumption and have since encountered a much better explanation for what a good story requires: the opportunity for change. A character should either change (for the better or for the worse) or face a last chance to change and fail to do so. This failure to change is a much harder story to tell well, which is why, I think, so many grad students think it’s impossible. But Young Adult is an example of a successful story of this kind. Mavis desperately wants change, but she is incapable of it; in the end she returns to the same life she’s been living and probably will live until drinking herself to an early death.
This movie certainly is not for everyone. It features a despicable lead character who fails to grow and learn from her mistakes. It is not uplifting by any means. But it is realistic. And for me, it resonated.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Thursday, December 29, 2011
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
In many ways, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a straightforward mystery-thriller. The basics of the plot are simple: a girl disappeared forty years ago on an island, and since the bridge leading to and from the island was blocked, it was impossible for her to have run away, so the family assumes she was killed and the body disposed of; everyone who was present that day is a suspect; an investigator, Mikael Blomkvist, is brought in to untangle the mystery; and through some twists and turns, he does just that. So the structure of the story is by no means original—it essentially could be an Agatha Christie or Arthur Conan Doyle story—and it even dips into the melodramatic quite regularly. If it weren’t enough that there is a murderer in the family, it turns out that there is actually a serial killer on the loose. And not only that, there are Nazis, too. By the time the villain is revealed, the story has many elements of the ridiculous about it, and as the final showdown between killer and investigator plays out, this could easily be no more than a commonplace thriller whose only purpose is to entertain for a couple hours and then be quietly forgotten. Yet it manages to be more than that.
I have not read the Stieg Larsson novels on which this movie and its inevitable sequels are based, but I know they were huge international bestsellers, and like many huge international bestsellers, I’ve heard from those who have read them that these books are not very well written. One friend told me that the core plot was interesting, but the novel reads like a rough draft in serious need of revision. So the question arises: why are these books so popular? Of course, there is the argument to be made that the average reader is not particularly interested in literary merit, which I think is true. But why would so many Americans be drawn to these Swedish mysteries when there are so many James Pattersons and John Grishams to choose from? Surely, there must be something original going on. And, indeed, there is. The primary element that lifts this story above the crowd is the title character, Lisbeth Salander.
She presents a harsh exterior to the world: dyed black hair, cropped so she can wear a Mohawk if she chooses; multiple body piercings; black leather goth/punk clothing; and, of course, tattoos. When faced with situations that would crush the spirits of many people, she fights back, allowing her intense anger to pour forth. Her past is never fully revealed, but there are hints: though in her twenties, she is a ward of the state, required to report regularly to an appointed guardian or be institutionalized. She is brought into the murder investigation because she is a brilliant computer hacker. Like much of the rest of the story, Lisbeth could devolve into melodrama and be little more than a sum of sensational characteristics, but she does not. Part of what keeps her fascinating is the mystery of who she is and how she became the woman she has become. Despite her outer strength, there remains a vulnerable core. Yes, she is covered in tattoos, metal studs, and leather; but beneath those decorations is a tiny, vulnerable woman. Yes, she cleverly seeks revenge against those who wrong her, but behind her anger is a lonely girl.
Lisbeth Salander is a fascinating character, and director David Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian for the most part handle her well, choosing not to reveal too much. Rooney Mara plays the character superbly, showing hints of what’s going on beneath the surface, but holding back more than she reveals. A few key moments truly stand out. Lisbeth’s strength is demonstrated when she fights off a thief on a subway escalator. Her vulnerability is shown during a brutal rape scene. Her intelligence comes through as she pieces together clues to unravel a forty-year old mystery. Her sexuality emerges several times in both overt and subtle ways. And her deep desire to both connect with humanity and protect herself from the pain of human connections emerges slowly and touchingly. She is as complex a character as any in recent movies. I’m sure Lisbeth Salander is why Larsson’s novels are so popular.
Beyond the primary appeal of Lisbeth Salander, the film has one other aspect that makes it stand out beyond a simple melodramatic mystery story. A common thread runs through the story of the vanished girl, the family on the island, the subplot about corrupt businessmen, and how Lisbeth became the young woman she now is: the idea that the past affects the present. We are haunted by our pasts. Those spirits may be something as outrageous as Nazi ties in the family or as commonplace as childhood abuse, but those past events matter. This is a large and interesting theme. I am reminded of another work of Scandinavian literature: Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts. Again, from what I’ve heard about the books, I think it’s safe to say that Larsson is no Ibsen, but the theme is certainly worth exploring, and it adds resonance to what could be a simplistic thriller.
The movie has some flaws, certainly. The plot is more or less beside the point, though it’s interesting enough that it maintained my attention. After the primary mystery is solved, the movie continues for too long, essentially a full additional act beyond the standard three-act plot structure. One element that stood out to me as distracting was the difficulty of handling language. The story is set in Sweden, but for this Hollywood production, the actors all speak English. Many newspaper headlines and shop signs appear in Swedish, but the characters do Google searches in English, and even a tattoo is written in English when logically it would be in Swedish. Whether to use accents or not must be a challenging decision for this type of movie. I generally think the best approach is what they did in Amadeus: though the story takes place in Austria and the characters would logically speak German, the actors, British and American, all adopt a similar standard, somewhat formal, American accent. That would have worked here. Instead, we have most of the cast putting on Swedish accents, including Americans Rooney Mara and Robin Wright, and Swede Stellan Skarsgård, but Brit Daniel Craig sounds pretty much the same as when he plays James Bond. This lack of consistency was distracting. Though I don’t think they should have changed the setting, I think the language hurdle could have been handled more gracefully. But despite these weaknesses, the film is well made and engaging.
One final point is worth addressing: this story has already been adapted to film. There is a Swedish version from a couple years ago. After seeing the American movie, I decided to go back to the previous adaptation to compare. In most ways, the two are the same since the basic details of plot are the same. There are some differences, of course, but many of those differences are inconsequential. On a whole, I’d say the American version is more skillfully made as far as the quality of filmmaking, the cinematography, editing, and so forth. Also, nearly everyone in the American film is very attractive, while few of those in the Swedish film are. A middle-aged, wrinkly magazine publisher who looks like she may have cut her own hair is recast as the beautiful Robin Wright with no locks out of place. Even Lisbeth’s hacker associate, who is fat, hairy and looks like he rarely is away from his computer long enough to shower is far more attractive in the American film. The Swedish version of Mikael Blomkvist looks like a typical middle-aged man, including sagging, acne-scarred skin, which leads to a feeling that he may be in over his head and could wind up being killed by the murderer he’s trying to catch. In the American version, Mikael is played by Daniel Craig, James Bond himself, so when he is supposedly in danger, it doesn’t feel real because we know that James Bond always escapes from the villain in the final moments.
The most significant difference has to be in the portrayal of Lisbeth. While Noomi Rapace is certainly a beautiful woman, she is flat chested and does not have the toned muscles of a Hollywood starlet. She is much more androgynous than Rooney Mara, who presents a more overtly sexual version of Lisbeth. Overall, the American Lisbeth is more extreme, less subtle, than the Swedish version. When she is hassled in the subway, she fights back like an action star. When she is raped, the extreme nature of the violation is graphically portrayed. But the American film pulls back at a key moment. Toward the end of the story, in the Swedish version, Lisbeth is faced with a life and death decision. In the American version, the decision is out of Lisbeth’s hands. Denying Lisbeth the chance to make a clear choice feels like a copout on the part of the American filmmakers. They have worked hard to portray the complexity of the character, to hint at the past that she struggles to deal with, to show both a vulnerable and a strong human; then when a moment of action would clearly tell us who she is deep down, they remove the ability to act from Lisbeth’s control. One could debate what choice she would have made, but the Swedish version actually forces Lisbeth to choose. Though in many ways I prefer Mara’s take on the character, I think the Rapace version has a slight edge in the way it more honestly handles the key moment toward the end.
Ultimately, both films are worth seeing as they take what is a hackneyed basic plot and elevate it to something more interesting and less forgettable.
I have not read the Stieg Larsson novels on which this movie and its inevitable sequels are based, but I know they were huge international bestsellers, and like many huge international bestsellers, I’ve heard from those who have read them that these books are not very well written. One friend told me that the core plot was interesting, but the novel reads like a rough draft in serious need of revision. So the question arises: why are these books so popular? Of course, there is the argument to be made that the average reader is not particularly interested in literary merit, which I think is true. But why would so many Americans be drawn to these Swedish mysteries when there are so many James Pattersons and John Grishams to choose from? Surely, there must be something original going on. And, indeed, there is. The primary element that lifts this story above the crowd is the title character, Lisbeth Salander.
She presents a harsh exterior to the world: dyed black hair, cropped so she can wear a Mohawk if she chooses; multiple body piercings; black leather goth/punk clothing; and, of course, tattoos. When faced with situations that would crush the spirits of many people, she fights back, allowing her intense anger to pour forth. Her past is never fully revealed, but there are hints: though in her twenties, she is a ward of the state, required to report regularly to an appointed guardian or be institutionalized. She is brought into the murder investigation because she is a brilliant computer hacker. Like much of the rest of the story, Lisbeth could devolve into melodrama and be little more than a sum of sensational characteristics, but she does not. Part of what keeps her fascinating is the mystery of who she is and how she became the woman she has become. Despite her outer strength, there remains a vulnerable core. Yes, she is covered in tattoos, metal studs, and leather; but beneath those decorations is a tiny, vulnerable woman. Yes, she cleverly seeks revenge against those who wrong her, but behind her anger is a lonely girl.
Lisbeth Salander is a fascinating character, and director David Fincher and screenwriter Steven Zaillian for the most part handle her well, choosing not to reveal too much. Rooney Mara plays the character superbly, showing hints of what’s going on beneath the surface, but holding back more than she reveals. A few key moments truly stand out. Lisbeth’s strength is demonstrated when she fights off a thief on a subway escalator. Her vulnerability is shown during a brutal rape scene. Her intelligence comes through as she pieces together clues to unravel a forty-year old mystery. Her sexuality emerges several times in both overt and subtle ways. And her deep desire to both connect with humanity and protect herself from the pain of human connections emerges slowly and touchingly. She is as complex a character as any in recent movies. I’m sure Lisbeth Salander is why Larsson’s novels are so popular.
Beyond the primary appeal of Lisbeth Salander, the film has one other aspect that makes it stand out beyond a simple melodramatic mystery story. A common thread runs through the story of the vanished girl, the family on the island, the subplot about corrupt businessmen, and how Lisbeth became the young woman she now is: the idea that the past affects the present. We are haunted by our pasts. Those spirits may be something as outrageous as Nazi ties in the family or as commonplace as childhood abuse, but those past events matter. This is a large and interesting theme. I am reminded of another work of Scandinavian literature: Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts. Again, from what I’ve heard about the books, I think it’s safe to say that Larsson is no Ibsen, but the theme is certainly worth exploring, and it adds resonance to what could be a simplistic thriller.
The movie has some flaws, certainly. The plot is more or less beside the point, though it’s interesting enough that it maintained my attention. After the primary mystery is solved, the movie continues for too long, essentially a full additional act beyond the standard three-act plot structure. One element that stood out to me as distracting was the difficulty of handling language. The story is set in Sweden, but for this Hollywood production, the actors all speak English. Many newspaper headlines and shop signs appear in Swedish, but the characters do Google searches in English, and even a tattoo is written in English when logically it would be in Swedish. Whether to use accents or not must be a challenging decision for this type of movie. I generally think the best approach is what they did in Amadeus: though the story takes place in Austria and the characters would logically speak German, the actors, British and American, all adopt a similar standard, somewhat formal, American accent. That would have worked here. Instead, we have most of the cast putting on Swedish accents, including Americans Rooney Mara and Robin Wright, and Swede Stellan Skarsgård, but Brit Daniel Craig sounds pretty much the same as when he plays James Bond. This lack of consistency was distracting. Though I don’t think they should have changed the setting, I think the language hurdle could have been handled more gracefully. But despite these weaknesses, the film is well made and engaging.
One final point is worth addressing: this story has already been adapted to film. There is a Swedish version from a couple years ago. After seeing the American movie, I decided to go back to the previous adaptation to compare. In most ways, the two are the same since the basic details of plot are the same. There are some differences, of course, but many of those differences are inconsequential. On a whole, I’d say the American version is more skillfully made as far as the quality of filmmaking, the cinematography, editing, and so forth. Also, nearly everyone in the American film is very attractive, while few of those in the Swedish film are. A middle-aged, wrinkly magazine publisher who looks like she may have cut her own hair is recast as the beautiful Robin Wright with no locks out of place. Even Lisbeth’s hacker associate, who is fat, hairy and looks like he rarely is away from his computer long enough to shower is far more attractive in the American film. The Swedish version of Mikael Blomkvist looks like a typical middle-aged man, including sagging, acne-scarred skin, which leads to a feeling that he may be in over his head and could wind up being killed by the murderer he’s trying to catch. In the American version, Mikael is played by Daniel Craig, James Bond himself, so when he is supposedly in danger, it doesn’t feel real because we know that James Bond always escapes from the villain in the final moments.
The most significant difference has to be in the portrayal of Lisbeth. While Noomi Rapace is certainly a beautiful woman, she is flat chested and does not have the toned muscles of a Hollywood starlet. She is much more androgynous than Rooney Mara, who presents a more overtly sexual version of Lisbeth. Overall, the American Lisbeth is more extreme, less subtle, than the Swedish version. When she is hassled in the subway, she fights back like an action star. When she is raped, the extreme nature of the violation is graphically portrayed. But the American film pulls back at a key moment. Toward the end of the story, in the Swedish version, Lisbeth is faced with a life and death decision. In the American version, the decision is out of Lisbeth’s hands. Denying Lisbeth the chance to make a clear choice feels like a copout on the part of the American filmmakers. They have worked hard to portray the complexity of the character, to hint at the past that she struggles to deal with, to show both a vulnerable and a strong human; then when a moment of action would clearly tell us who she is deep down, they remove the ability to act from Lisbeth’s control. One could debate what choice she would have made, but the Swedish version actually forces Lisbeth to choose. Though in many ways I prefer Mara’s take on the character, I think the Rapace version has a slight edge in the way it more honestly handles the key moment toward the end.
Ultimately, both films are worth seeing as they take what is a hackneyed basic plot and elevate it to something more interesting and less forgettable.
Saturday, October 1, 2011
Up in the Air
I am a huge movie fan, yet I’ll freely admit that there are few movies that have truly changed my life. For instance, I grew up in a somewhat conservative household, and I thought of gays as bad people. I remember that I took piano lessons when I was a kid from a man who my parents mentioned in passing was gay, which really shook me up. I quit piano lessons shortly thereafter, in part due to my fear that I was in danger of being molested sitting on a bench alone in a room with a gay man. Then when I was a freshman in high school, a friend and I went to see Philadelphia, which really humanized homosexuals for me. Tom Hanks made me see a gay man as a person deserving of respect and fair treatment, an ordinary human being rather than a monster. But that movie is one of the rare instances of a film that challenged my views on the world and really shook me up.
One of the few recent films to do help change my thinking like that is Up in the Air. I saw it originally in the theater, and though I loved it immediately and felt it was the standout film of that year (and it’s still one of my favorite movies of the past several years), it also really depressed me and left me feeling down for a couple weeks. The reason this movie shook me up so much is because I related strongly to the main character, Ryan Bingham (played by George Clooney in a phenomenal performance), a man who has virtually no ties to the world around him, who lives distanced from other people, who is alone in any crowd, and who likes his existence exactly as it is. Or at least he likes it when the film begins. As with many great stories, Up in the Air is about a character in the process of changing, and during the story, Ryan realizes how much is lacking in his life. He comes to appreciate that relationships are what truly give life meaning.
I imagine this simple message is one that most people will find obvious, and of course it is. The movie unfolds in many ways as one might expect. This solitary man starts to fall for a woman he meets on the road. He is challenged in his philosophy of isolationism by a young colleague, and reconnects with his distanced family through a wedding in which the groom has cold feet. Yet despite those basic, somewhat predictable plot turns, the movie holds surprises. It feels fresh and real in its humor. The specific setup—a man whose job is to travel the country firing people—is one I’ve never seen in another story. The performances are strong across the board. And the ending manages to avoid the obvious. In fact, what struck me the most when I first watched the movie was how perfect the ending is. As it got closer, I worried that there would be a pat ending that would feel forced, and then the movie stunned me by ducking away at the last moment from what would have been a clichéd, trite, romantic-comedy ending, and instead had Ryan’s story unfold in what struck me as the most truthful way possible. It was beautiful and resonant in the way that great art is, but it was also enough to send me into a blue mood for days.
Again, the message of the film might seem fairly obvious, but it was a message that hit me hard. I spent much of my young adulthood cultivating connections about as well as Ryan Bingham did. I didn’t have a career like his that sent me traveling a majority of the time, from the time I finished college, I moved about every two years, and not just to a new apartment or to a city across the state. I moved from one corner of the country to another. Of course, when one only lives in a place for a couple years at a time, one does not develop strong relationships. But by the time I reached my thirties, I was beginning to reevaluate where I stood in life. I looked at those around me who seemed the happiest, and I saw strong connections and love that I lacked.
I think the desire to connect with other people is natural and inborn in most people, but somehow it was something that I struggled with and only came to understand much later. So when I saw Up in the Air, I saw myself: a man with no deep connections and, therefore, no sustenance for life. At one point in the film, a character asks about what the point of everything is, what it all means. And the only answer is simply that the happiest moments in life are those moments that are shared with others. As I mentioned before, that may seem obvious to most people, but it was a conclusion I had been coming to slowly over a period of years.
Now, there are certainly differences between me and Ryan Bingham. I’m not nearly as handsome and successful, for one thing. And I’m younger. And I have a far better relationship with my family. Truly, I am probably closer with my family than most people are with theirs, and they are what have sustained me emotionally throughout my life. But in key ways, I resonated with Clooney’s character.
After the film, I continued to think about what really matters in life and reached a conclusion I had been approaching for a long time, and it’s the same conclusion that Ryan Bingham reaches. Within months of seeing Up in the Air, I began trying to cultivate a relationship for myself in the hope that I might be able to achieve the kind of happiness I see in those who have deep connections. And I even began dating more seriously than I ever had before. Up to that point in my life, my longest dating relationship had lasted about two months. But now, my new longest relationship was close to a year. That relationship didn’t ultimately work out because we were very different people and not a great fit for each other in some key ways, but it did give me a taste for the connection that I long for and increased my desire to experience the love that I see in others.
Although it seems a bit strange to say it, the movie Up in the Air really may have changed my life. I’m not sure whether the nearly year-long relationship I recently had would have happened had I not seen this movie. I’m not sure that I would believe that maybe I will find connection someday had I not seen it. In the short term, it made me depressed, but in the long term, it acted as a catalyst for me to begin changing some of the ways I approach my life. And to have such power makes it a rare work of art, indeed.
One of the few recent films to do help change my thinking like that is Up in the Air. I saw it originally in the theater, and though I loved it immediately and felt it was the standout film of that year (and it’s still one of my favorite movies of the past several years), it also really depressed me and left me feeling down for a couple weeks. The reason this movie shook me up so much is because I related strongly to the main character, Ryan Bingham (played by George Clooney in a phenomenal performance), a man who has virtually no ties to the world around him, who lives distanced from other people, who is alone in any crowd, and who likes his existence exactly as it is. Or at least he likes it when the film begins. As with many great stories, Up in the Air is about a character in the process of changing, and during the story, Ryan realizes how much is lacking in his life. He comes to appreciate that relationships are what truly give life meaning.
I imagine this simple message is one that most people will find obvious, and of course it is. The movie unfolds in many ways as one might expect. This solitary man starts to fall for a woman he meets on the road. He is challenged in his philosophy of isolationism by a young colleague, and reconnects with his distanced family through a wedding in which the groom has cold feet. Yet despite those basic, somewhat predictable plot turns, the movie holds surprises. It feels fresh and real in its humor. The specific setup—a man whose job is to travel the country firing people—is one I’ve never seen in another story. The performances are strong across the board. And the ending manages to avoid the obvious. In fact, what struck me the most when I first watched the movie was how perfect the ending is. As it got closer, I worried that there would be a pat ending that would feel forced, and then the movie stunned me by ducking away at the last moment from what would have been a clichéd, trite, romantic-comedy ending, and instead had Ryan’s story unfold in what struck me as the most truthful way possible. It was beautiful and resonant in the way that great art is, but it was also enough to send me into a blue mood for days.
Again, the message of the film might seem fairly obvious, but it was a message that hit me hard. I spent much of my young adulthood cultivating connections about as well as Ryan Bingham did. I didn’t have a career like his that sent me traveling a majority of the time, from the time I finished college, I moved about every two years, and not just to a new apartment or to a city across the state. I moved from one corner of the country to another. Of course, when one only lives in a place for a couple years at a time, one does not develop strong relationships. But by the time I reached my thirties, I was beginning to reevaluate where I stood in life. I looked at those around me who seemed the happiest, and I saw strong connections and love that I lacked.
I think the desire to connect with other people is natural and inborn in most people, but somehow it was something that I struggled with and only came to understand much later. So when I saw Up in the Air, I saw myself: a man with no deep connections and, therefore, no sustenance for life. At one point in the film, a character asks about what the point of everything is, what it all means. And the only answer is simply that the happiest moments in life are those moments that are shared with others. As I mentioned before, that may seem obvious to most people, but it was a conclusion I had been coming to slowly over a period of years.
Now, there are certainly differences between me and Ryan Bingham. I’m not nearly as handsome and successful, for one thing. And I’m younger. And I have a far better relationship with my family. Truly, I am probably closer with my family than most people are with theirs, and they are what have sustained me emotionally throughout my life. But in key ways, I resonated with Clooney’s character.
After the film, I continued to think about what really matters in life and reached a conclusion I had been approaching for a long time, and it’s the same conclusion that Ryan Bingham reaches. Within months of seeing Up in the Air, I began trying to cultivate a relationship for myself in the hope that I might be able to achieve the kind of happiness I see in those who have deep connections. And I even began dating more seriously than I ever had before. Up to that point in my life, my longest dating relationship had lasted about two months. But now, my new longest relationship was close to a year. That relationship didn’t ultimately work out because we were very different people and not a great fit for each other in some key ways, but it did give me a taste for the connection that I long for and increased my desire to experience the love that I see in others.
Although it seems a bit strange to say it, the movie Up in the Air really may have changed my life. I’m not sure whether the nearly year-long relationship I recently had would have happened had I not seen this movie. I’m not sure that I would believe that maybe I will find connection someday had I not seen it. In the short term, it made me depressed, but in the long term, it acted as a catalyst for me to begin changing some of the ways I approach my life. And to have such power makes it a rare work of art, indeed.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
Moneyball
This probably says something significant about me as a person: My first impulse when I initially saw a trailer for Moneyball was to think, “Hmm . . . a baseball movie? I’ll pass.” Then the trailer continued, and I thought, “Oh, it’s a movie about statistics; a movie that glorifies rational thought and the power of cold, hard numbers over intuition—yes, that’s a movie for me!”
First, let me address the baseball movie issue. I am not a sports fan in general and not a baseball fan in particular. And when it comes to movies about sports, baseball tends to leave me cold. I remember liking Hoosiers and The Pistol as far as basketball movies go. Rocky is fantastic, and The Fighter was quite good. And even all the football in Jerry Maguire got my blood pumping. But baseball seems to have a much bigger draw for fans when it becomes the subject of movies. And here’s my deal: I didn’t get Field of Dreams. It’s been years since I saw it, but I remember it being boring and without any real appeal. Then there’s Bull Durham, which I understand is highly rated as one of the all time great baseball movies. I watched it years ago and felt confused because I was under the impression it was supposed to be a great comedy, yet I didn’t think it was funny, and I also didn’t think it was interesting at all. Strangely, though, I did enjoy For Love of the Game, a movie that I think is rarely rated as highly as those other Costner baseball stories. The difference for me with that movie was that although it was about baseball, it felt to me to tell a sort of universal story about passion. It didn’t matter particularly that the main character was a pitcher striving for a perfect game; he could have easily been a poet struggling to compose a perfect stanza or a guitarist trying to move an audience with his playing or anything, really. The theme of loving what one does and trying to be great resonated with me, even though it was about baseball, which I don’t specifically care about.
Moneyball has the same type of appeal. It is specifically about baseball, but it’s about more than that. It’s about how one looks at the world and understands how events unfold. There are those who believe in going with their guts, in following intuition, believing that it will lead to the best possible outcome. Those people feel rather than think. This is a tempting way to live life. It can be exciting, and certainly when it comes to something like sports, it can be dramatic because the scout gets a good feeling about a young athlete, and then when the athlete delivers on the promise and hits the dramatic game-winning homerun, the crowd cheers, and the scout appreciates that his intuition led him down the right path. But the problem with this approach to life is that it’s not as reliable as a more rational approach. Those with a scientific worldview will have a better understanding of the real world around them, but that world will likely be less exciting because of that.
I try to live my life rationally. I believe science and statistics are the best way to understand our world. Intuition is inherently faulty. So the premise of Moneyball held strong appeal for me. And sure enough, it delivered.
The basic story is about Billy Beane, a former baseball player who never lived up to the promise he showed as a high school athlete. He is now the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, a team that can’t compete with most other teams because of its small budget and inability to attract star players. But Beane rethinks how to put a team together and focuses on the statistics of his players rather than the less tangible factors like what they look like or how much muscle they have or how attractive their girlfriends are or how they live their lives off the field—the factors that lead traditional scouts to have gut feelings about who will be a star and who won’t. Beane understands that a successful team isn’t about star power, it’s about adding up point after point after point, getting on base, no matter whether that’s achieved through homeruns or walks. By putting together a group of cheaper players who have consistent abilities to get onto base, he is able to compile a team that will win more consistently than those teams made up of pricey superstars.
The disadvantage to a story like this is that it’s inherently less dramatic than the traditional sports story. It has the underdogs-make-good plotline that often comes with this territory, but there’s no big hero. We don’t have the amazing player to root for. We have players who don’t swing at the ball and get walked onto first base. But that’s the power of this story: in the real world, the cold, hard numbers win. It’s exciting to think about beating the casino through an amazing streak of luck, but over time the casino will always win because the odds are in its favor. And Moneyball shows how the same idea is true in sports because it’s true in all aspects of life. Statistics trump feelings.
I’ve read a couple reviews of Moneyball that critique the sometimes slow pace and assert that the movie, though generally strong, has too many endings so continues on too long. I can understand this view, but I disagree. The ending wasn’t flashy with a victorious team. It was a slow winding down with some reflection. And that felt right to me. A big victory is exciting, yes, but to truly appreciate the way the world works, one has to slow down and think.
First, let me address the baseball movie issue. I am not a sports fan in general and not a baseball fan in particular. And when it comes to movies about sports, baseball tends to leave me cold. I remember liking Hoosiers and The Pistol as far as basketball movies go. Rocky is fantastic, and The Fighter was quite good. And even all the football in Jerry Maguire got my blood pumping. But baseball seems to have a much bigger draw for fans when it becomes the subject of movies. And here’s my deal: I didn’t get Field of Dreams. It’s been years since I saw it, but I remember it being boring and without any real appeal. Then there’s Bull Durham, which I understand is highly rated as one of the all time great baseball movies. I watched it years ago and felt confused because I was under the impression it was supposed to be a great comedy, yet I didn’t think it was funny, and I also didn’t think it was interesting at all. Strangely, though, I did enjoy For Love of the Game, a movie that I think is rarely rated as highly as those other Costner baseball stories. The difference for me with that movie was that although it was about baseball, it felt to me to tell a sort of universal story about passion. It didn’t matter particularly that the main character was a pitcher striving for a perfect game; he could have easily been a poet struggling to compose a perfect stanza or a guitarist trying to move an audience with his playing or anything, really. The theme of loving what one does and trying to be great resonated with me, even though it was about baseball, which I don’t specifically care about.
Moneyball has the same type of appeal. It is specifically about baseball, but it’s about more than that. It’s about how one looks at the world and understands how events unfold. There are those who believe in going with their guts, in following intuition, believing that it will lead to the best possible outcome. Those people feel rather than think. This is a tempting way to live life. It can be exciting, and certainly when it comes to something like sports, it can be dramatic because the scout gets a good feeling about a young athlete, and then when the athlete delivers on the promise and hits the dramatic game-winning homerun, the crowd cheers, and the scout appreciates that his intuition led him down the right path. But the problem with this approach to life is that it’s not as reliable as a more rational approach. Those with a scientific worldview will have a better understanding of the real world around them, but that world will likely be less exciting because of that.
I try to live my life rationally. I believe science and statistics are the best way to understand our world. Intuition is inherently faulty. So the premise of Moneyball held strong appeal for me. And sure enough, it delivered.
The basic story is about Billy Beane, a former baseball player who never lived up to the promise he showed as a high school athlete. He is now the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, a team that can’t compete with most other teams because of its small budget and inability to attract star players. But Beane rethinks how to put a team together and focuses on the statistics of his players rather than the less tangible factors like what they look like or how much muscle they have or how attractive their girlfriends are or how they live their lives off the field—the factors that lead traditional scouts to have gut feelings about who will be a star and who won’t. Beane understands that a successful team isn’t about star power, it’s about adding up point after point after point, getting on base, no matter whether that’s achieved through homeruns or walks. By putting together a group of cheaper players who have consistent abilities to get onto base, he is able to compile a team that will win more consistently than those teams made up of pricey superstars.
The disadvantage to a story like this is that it’s inherently less dramatic than the traditional sports story. It has the underdogs-make-good plotline that often comes with this territory, but there’s no big hero. We don’t have the amazing player to root for. We have players who don’t swing at the ball and get walked onto first base. But that’s the power of this story: in the real world, the cold, hard numbers win. It’s exciting to think about beating the casino through an amazing streak of luck, but over time the casino will always win because the odds are in its favor. And Moneyball shows how the same idea is true in sports because it’s true in all aspects of life. Statistics trump feelings.
I’ve read a couple reviews of Moneyball that critique the sometimes slow pace and assert that the movie, though generally strong, has too many endings so continues on too long. I can understand this view, but I disagree. The ending wasn’t flashy with a victorious team. It was a slow winding down with some reflection. And that felt right to me. A big victory is exciting, yes, but to truly appreciate the way the world works, one has to slow down and think.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
As a kid growing up in Arizona, I was not a huge fan of cowboys and the Old West and the whole western genre of stories. I resisted the appeal of that mythology because I was surrounded by it. My town, which had been the territorial capital of Arizona, had its annual Frontier Days and Territorial Days and The World’s Oldest Rodeo. My young rebellious spirit wanted to like something different, not something that the rest of my town seemed obsessed with. And yet some of the appeal did sink in, in part due to my older brother’s influence. He loved cowboys, and since I looked up to him, I started getting into some of those as well. But my early images of westerns include Emilio Estevez and Kevin Costner rather than John Wayne and Gary Cooper. It wasn’t until later in life that I went back and started watching some of the old classics. And when I finally did, I was stunned by how good many of them are. I had largely dismissed the genre as cheesy, sentimental, and simplistic. But many are truly great films with complex themes.
I just watched for the first time The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a John Ford western starring James Stewart and John Wayne. This is a great example of what the western genre is capable of. The basic story is about senator Ransom “Rans” Stoddard (James Stewart) who returns from Washington to the small western town of Shinbone to attend the funeral of an old friend. The local newspaperman is curious who would bring such a prominent man all that way, and the name Tom Doniphon is unfamiliar to him. So Rans begins telling the tale of how he first came to Shinbone. The movie flashes back to decades earlier. We meet young Rans, an optimistic lawyer headed west; Tom (John Wayne), a gruff but kindhearted homesteader; the outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin); and Hallie, the woman both Tom and Rans desire, who, as we’ve already seen in the opening, will eventually become Rans’s wife. The basic structure works like many other movies, among them Citizen Kane, with initial questions presented that we expect to see revealed through the flashback. We want to know who shot the gunslinger Liberty Valance and how bookish Rans rather than tough Tom ended up marrying Hallie. But those issues of plot are not what make this film special. It’s the exploration of significant themes that make the movie a standout.
I was struck early on by the names Ransom and Liberty. Clearly liberty is a significant ideal when packing up and moving out to the frontier. A major conflict in the story comes from the different ideals of the townsfolk, who want their territory to become a state, and the ranchers, who want no outside intrusion and regulation of their free range. The townsfolk want law and order, which could mean sacrificing some personal liberties for the greater good of all. The ranchers want total freedom, which can result in anarchy. Representing that anarchy is Liberty Valance, who, along with being a thief and killer, is also a hired thug sent to Shinbone to scare the townspeople into voting the way the ranchers want. But what about Ransom? What does his name signify? Ransom wants to use the law to prosecute Liberty Valance, but Tom insists that the only way to deal with the outlaw is by being quick with a gun. So what has to be ransomed, paid, sacrificed? Is it possible to have liberty without ransoming some principles? Is liberty itself worth sacrificing?
These ideas are hit upon several times in different ways. For instance, Rans starts a school to teach the townsfolk to read and write and understand the laws of the country in which they live. The opening words of the Declaration of Independence are recited by Pompey, Shinbone’s sole African American, who is not allowed to drink with the white men at the saloon. Pompey struggles to recite the words, forgetting the part about all men being created equal, until Rans reminds him. And the remaining lines about unalienable rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—are left unspoken to resonate silently with the audience.
There’s much more, too, in this film. Ideas about the role of the press in our democracy and the ways politics can become a sideshow are explored. The film even touches on the end of the Old West, the way that time has been misrepresented and misremembered, ideas that are prominently explored in later western films like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven.
I could continue on with interesting themes this film explores, and I’m sure this is one that will resonate in my head for days to come. The bottom line is this: if you’re like me and have in the past dismissed westerns, give them another try. Their quality and complexity might surprise you.
I just watched for the first time The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a John Ford western starring James Stewart and John Wayne. This is a great example of what the western genre is capable of. The basic story is about senator Ransom “Rans” Stoddard (James Stewart) who returns from Washington to the small western town of Shinbone to attend the funeral of an old friend. The local newspaperman is curious who would bring such a prominent man all that way, and the name Tom Doniphon is unfamiliar to him. So Rans begins telling the tale of how he first came to Shinbone. The movie flashes back to decades earlier. We meet young Rans, an optimistic lawyer headed west; Tom (John Wayne), a gruff but kindhearted homesteader; the outlaw Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin); and Hallie, the woman both Tom and Rans desire, who, as we’ve already seen in the opening, will eventually become Rans’s wife. The basic structure works like many other movies, among them Citizen Kane, with initial questions presented that we expect to see revealed through the flashback. We want to know who shot the gunslinger Liberty Valance and how bookish Rans rather than tough Tom ended up marrying Hallie. But those issues of plot are not what make this film special. It’s the exploration of significant themes that make the movie a standout.
I was struck early on by the names Ransom and Liberty. Clearly liberty is a significant ideal when packing up and moving out to the frontier. A major conflict in the story comes from the different ideals of the townsfolk, who want their territory to become a state, and the ranchers, who want no outside intrusion and regulation of their free range. The townsfolk want law and order, which could mean sacrificing some personal liberties for the greater good of all. The ranchers want total freedom, which can result in anarchy. Representing that anarchy is Liberty Valance, who, along with being a thief and killer, is also a hired thug sent to Shinbone to scare the townspeople into voting the way the ranchers want. But what about Ransom? What does his name signify? Ransom wants to use the law to prosecute Liberty Valance, but Tom insists that the only way to deal with the outlaw is by being quick with a gun. So what has to be ransomed, paid, sacrificed? Is it possible to have liberty without ransoming some principles? Is liberty itself worth sacrificing?
These ideas are hit upon several times in different ways. For instance, Rans starts a school to teach the townsfolk to read and write and understand the laws of the country in which they live. The opening words of the Declaration of Independence are recited by Pompey, Shinbone’s sole African American, who is not allowed to drink with the white men at the saloon. Pompey struggles to recite the words, forgetting the part about all men being created equal, until Rans reminds him. And the remaining lines about unalienable rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—are left unspoken to resonate silently with the audience.
There’s much more, too, in this film. Ideas about the role of the press in our democracy and the ways politics can become a sideshow are explored. The film even touches on the end of the Old West, the way that time has been misrepresented and misremembered, ideas that are prominently explored in later western films like Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven.
I could continue on with interesting themes this film explores, and I’m sure this is one that will resonate in my head for days to come. The bottom line is this: if you’re like me and have in the past dismissed westerns, give them another try. Their quality and complexity might surprise you.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
The Trip
Probably my favorite new movie I’ve seen this summer is The Trip. This is a British movie that was evidently first a six-episode BBC television show and then was reedited into a feature film. This seems like a strange way to make a movie, as there must have been an hour or so of material from the sitcom cut out. But it works well. I’m curious to see what was included in the original show that was left out of the movie, but I don’t feel like anything is missing. As a film, it works well.
The story is about English actor/comedian Steve Coogan (played by English actor/comedian Steve Coogan), who is taking a road trip through the north of England, visiting restaurants and bed & breakfasts for an article he’s been contracted to write. He was planning on taking his American girlfriend, but she decided they need a break and has returned to America. So instead, Steve takes his friend, the Welsh actor/comedian Rob Brydon (played by Welsh actor/comedian Rob Brydon). The plot is really nothing more than these two traveling around, talking about what they would like to do in their careers, and working on various impressions. Yet there’s so much more going on.
The most immediately enjoyable parts of the movie feature the two competing with each other in performances. In one scene that will surely be remembered and replayed again and again, they both work on Michael Caine impressions. In another, they discuss wanting to make a period drama à la Braveheart or Rob Roy, and the conversation devolves into a hilarious bit about when a troupe of soldiers should rise before battle, whether they need to rise at daybreak or if maybe they could sleep in a little and get going by 9:30 following a continental breakfast. There are several set pieces along these lines that stand out and made me laugh incredibly hard. Before watching the movie, I had heard clips on the radio and seen some of the Michael Caine sequence in ads, and I feared that maybe I’d already experienced the best the movie had to offer, and though those scenes are some of the best, there are many, many more throughout.
What elevates this movie, however, is the quiet moments intertwined with the hilarity. Steve Coogan is a talented comic actor who has yet to really break out in America. My understanding is that in Britain, he is fairly well known for having played an iconic character for years on television. But in Hollywood, he’s still relatively unknown. I first saw him in the movie 24 Hour Party People (directed by Michael Winterbottom, who also directed The Trip), which is a fantastic film, and Coogan is great in it. I remember around that time hearing that he was going to break out and become an A-list actor as a result of that movie. The next thing I remember seeing him in was Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, another movie I loved. In this one, Coogan played Steve Coogan, a self-important actor who is hitting the big time following his performance in 24 Hour Party People. He meets with Alfred Molina and barely has time to spare for someone at Molina’s level of celebrity, which I found amusing in part because I would consider Molina more famous than Coogan, and now, years later, Coogan still hasn’t achieved the fame that the Steve of Coffee and Cigarettes seemed to feel was his due. I saw Coogan play Steve Coogan again in Winterbottom’s meta-adaptation of Tristram Shandy, A Cock and Bull Story. And for the third time, Coogan plays a version of himself in The Trip. In between these, he has been in bigger Hollywood movies, like Tropic Thunder and The Other Guys, but he has still never managed to become a household name in America. And this is the basis for the Steve character in The Trip. He is an actor who has been somewhat typecast as his television character in Britain and desperately wants to break out in Hollywood, but despite a decade of making movies, he has yet to reach the level he feels he’s entitled to.
The issue at the heart of The Trip is identity. Who is Steve Coogan? What kind of person is he? What kind of actor? Ultimately, the movie portrays him again and again as someone who desperately wishes to be something and someone he isn’t. Of course, actors make their living being people they aren’t, and that thread runs through the whole movie as both Steve and Rob attempt to be the better version of Michael Caine or of James Bond or of a Bond villain. Actors are supposed to not be themselves. But in The Trip, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are playing Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. And as the two interact, the differences between them emerge. Rob is married and has a baby. He is so aware of what makes him successful, that he has developed an iPhone app for one of his silly character voices. He’s content with his life and with his career. He’s a comedian. He’s an impressionist. He spends nearly as much of his time speaking in other people’s voices as he does his own, but he seems comfortable. He is most himself when he is Hugh Grant. Steve, on the other hand, is divorced. He chases younger women. He is a father but rarely talks to his children. He wishes he had the career of Michael Sheen. He thinks he has not been granted his due. He is discontented with his life and seems uncomfortable being himself. But, like Rob, Steve’s identity comes through most clearly and he seems the most comfortable when he is riffing on impressions and joking around. He is, deep down, a comedian, but he wishes he were a great dramatic actor. His failure to be himself, to accept who he truly is, is his great tragedy.
The Trip is fully worth watching solely on the merits of the comic scenes, but the exploration of identity lifts the film to another level. Steve Coogan, the character, is a modern Salieri, and Steve Coogan, the actor, plays the role so perfectly that it is clear he is a very talented dramatic actor as well as a talented comedian. I’m sure Steve Coogan could be a star on the level of Michael Sheen, but I hope he is content being Steve Coogan. That’s certainly good enough.
The story is about English actor/comedian Steve Coogan (played by English actor/comedian Steve Coogan), who is taking a road trip through the north of England, visiting restaurants and bed & breakfasts for an article he’s been contracted to write. He was planning on taking his American girlfriend, but she decided they need a break and has returned to America. So instead, Steve takes his friend, the Welsh actor/comedian Rob Brydon (played by Welsh actor/comedian Rob Brydon). The plot is really nothing more than these two traveling around, talking about what they would like to do in their careers, and working on various impressions. Yet there’s so much more going on.
The most immediately enjoyable parts of the movie feature the two competing with each other in performances. In one scene that will surely be remembered and replayed again and again, they both work on Michael Caine impressions. In another, they discuss wanting to make a period drama à la Braveheart or Rob Roy, and the conversation devolves into a hilarious bit about when a troupe of soldiers should rise before battle, whether they need to rise at daybreak or if maybe they could sleep in a little and get going by 9:30 following a continental breakfast. There are several set pieces along these lines that stand out and made me laugh incredibly hard. Before watching the movie, I had heard clips on the radio and seen some of the Michael Caine sequence in ads, and I feared that maybe I’d already experienced the best the movie had to offer, and though those scenes are some of the best, there are many, many more throughout.
What elevates this movie, however, is the quiet moments intertwined with the hilarity. Steve Coogan is a talented comic actor who has yet to really break out in America. My understanding is that in Britain, he is fairly well known for having played an iconic character for years on television. But in Hollywood, he’s still relatively unknown. I first saw him in the movie 24 Hour Party People (directed by Michael Winterbottom, who also directed The Trip), which is a fantastic film, and Coogan is great in it. I remember around that time hearing that he was going to break out and become an A-list actor as a result of that movie. The next thing I remember seeing him in was Jim Jarmusch’s Coffee and Cigarettes, another movie I loved. In this one, Coogan played Steve Coogan, a self-important actor who is hitting the big time following his performance in 24 Hour Party People. He meets with Alfred Molina and barely has time to spare for someone at Molina’s level of celebrity, which I found amusing in part because I would consider Molina more famous than Coogan, and now, years later, Coogan still hasn’t achieved the fame that the Steve of Coffee and Cigarettes seemed to feel was his due. I saw Coogan play Steve Coogan again in Winterbottom’s meta-adaptation of Tristram Shandy, A Cock and Bull Story. And for the third time, Coogan plays a version of himself in The Trip. In between these, he has been in bigger Hollywood movies, like Tropic Thunder and The Other Guys, but he has still never managed to become a household name in America. And this is the basis for the Steve character in The Trip. He is an actor who has been somewhat typecast as his television character in Britain and desperately wants to break out in Hollywood, but despite a decade of making movies, he has yet to reach the level he feels he’s entitled to.
The issue at the heart of The Trip is identity. Who is Steve Coogan? What kind of person is he? What kind of actor? Ultimately, the movie portrays him again and again as someone who desperately wishes to be something and someone he isn’t. Of course, actors make their living being people they aren’t, and that thread runs through the whole movie as both Steve and Rob attempt to be the better version of Michael Caine or of James Bond or of a Bond villain. Actors are supposed to not be themselves. But in The Trip, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon are playing Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon. And as the two interact, the differences between them emerge. Rob is married and has a baby. He is so aware of what makes him successful, that he has developed an iPhone app for one of his silly character voices. He’s content with his life and with his career. He’s a comedian. He’s an impressionist. He spends nearly as much of his time speaking in other people’s voices as he does his own, but he seems comfortable. He is most himself when he is Hugh Grant. Steve, on the other hand, is divorced. He chases younger women. He is a father but rarely talks to his children. He wishes he had the career of Michael Sheen. He thinks he has not been granted his due. He is discontented with his life and seems uncomfortable being himself. But, like Rob, Steve’s identity comes through most clearly and he seems the most comfortable when he is riffing on impressions and joking around. He is, deep down, a comedian, but he wishes he were a great dramatic actor. His failure to be himself, to accept who he truly is, is his great tragedy.
The Trip is fully worth watching solely on the merits of the comic scenes, but the exploration of identity lifts the film to another level. Steve Coogan, the character, is a modern Salieri, and Steve Coogan, the actor, plays the role so perfectly that it is clear he is a very talented dramatic actor as well as a talented comedian. I’m sure Steve Coogan could be a star on the level of Michael Sheen, but I hope he is content being Steve Coogan. That’s certainly good enough.
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Super 8
Another summer movie I saw recently is Super 8. This one came fairly highly recommended. I had heard positive reviews and had friends comment on what a pleasure it was to see. Then another friend posted a comment on Facebook checking the generally overwhelming praise. He still seemed to think it was good, but not the greatest summer movie of our time. I was glad to read a few remarks going against the tide of praise to lower my expectations before I went to see it.
I didn’t go to it when it was still in its initial run; instead, I waited until it was at the second run theater at a nearby mall where matinee tickets are only two dollars and evening shows are four. I went to the 4:30 showing, and my ticket and a soda together cost less than the price of a ticket by itself at a first run theater. Of course, the sound system was a bit low tech, leaving the whole movie a bit muffled, and the seats have seen better days, but in order to save a few dollars, I’m willing to put up with the lesser accommodations, especially if it’s a movie I’m somewhat indifferent about or one that I’m seeing to stay out of the heat and kill a summer afternoon rather than because I’m desperate to see the movie itself. I saw Bridesmaids at this theater a couple weeks ago (and I still need to write about that one), and if I bother to see The Hangover 2, it’ll be either at this theater or on TV. But with Super 8, I actually wished I’d seen it at a nicer theater because it’s a movie that is well made and engaging enough to deserve the full theatrical treatment projected onto a big screen with high quality surround sound.
Let me not get carried away, though. The movie is good enough to deserve to been seen in all its glory, but that doesn’t mean it’s the greatest summer movie ever. Basically, it’s intended to feel like an old Steven Spielberg film, and it does achieve some of that feeling, but it also left me with the desire to go back and watch Jurassic Park and E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Super 8 is good, and it does capture some of the essence of those wonderful Spielberg films, but it also feels a bit like an imitation of them, a forgery of a master artist’s work.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the basic story, I’ll recap here. It’s 1979 in a small Ohio town. Our hero, Joe, is dealing with the death of his mother in a steel mill accident and the newfound reality of living alone with his father, who is unprepared to be a single parent. Summer vacation is starting, and Joe and his best friend Charles are excited to have more time to work on their 8mm zombie movie that they plan to enter in a local film contest (Joe handles makeup and special effects; Charles directs). They sneak out of the house one night to film on a train station platform, and as they film, a train derails. The Army comes to town to clean things up and investigate, and the mystery really begins: what or who was on that train? Why is the Army keeping things quiet? Why do all the dogs in town suddenly want to run away?
Strangely enough, the same elements that work as some of Super 8’s great strengths are also weaknesses. Charles, the young film director, talks about changing his script to add more story because that is what will move an audience. He read an article in a moviemaking magazine about the need for more than just special effects and thrilling adventure. So Charles writes in a wife for the main character, so the audience will understand what’s at stake for him. Charles also realizes that in order to stand a chance at making his movie stand out in the competition, he needs “production value.” So he films as the train passes by and ultimately derails so his film will have more going on than just kids standing around talking. Later, he films in front of the derailed train and near a group of Army guys. The same elements that Charles recognizes as essential to a good film are present throughout Super 8. The dead mother makes the audience more invested in Joe’s character. The conflicts between parents and children add more emotion. The derailing train sequence is a great example of production value, as are the other top notch special effects throughout the rest of the movie.
So if what we go to movies for is to have our emotions played with and to be awed with production value, then Super 8 is a great film. However, I sometimes felt like it was all a bit shallow, like J. J. Abrams, the writer-director, was really just a grown up version of Charles. All he wants to do is have fun making a movie, not because he has a story he feels utterly compelled to tell, but rather because he loves movies and wants to make one like the kind he loves. So the special effects and emotional twists come across as a bit manipulative rather than authentic. Just as Charles wanted to make his version of a Romero film, Abrams wanted to make his version of a Spielberg. I imagine him working on the screenplay and trying to figure out what would make this movie stand out, and just as Charles thinks, “I’ll give the guy a wife,” Abrams thinks, “I’ll give the kid a dead mom.”
It’s hard to explain exactly why I find it a bit dissatisfying. Overall, it is very well made. The audience is as skillfully manipulated as in just about any other movie. And I enjoyed the experience on a whole. Yet I also left feeling a bit empty, like this was only a great movie if I didn’t think too much about it. Or maybe it’s as simple as I mentioned earlier: the move left me really wanting to watch E.T. or Jurassic Park. Super 8 is a great example of just how good Spielberg is, though I can’t explain why he’s so much better than almost everybody else.
I didn’t go to it when it was still in its initial run; instead, I waited until it was at the second run theater at a nearby mall where matinee tickets are only two dollars and evening shows are four. I went to the 4:30 showing, and my ticket and a soda together cost less than the price of a ticket by itself at a first run theater. Of course, the sound system was a bit low tech, leaving the whole movie a bit muffled, and the seats have seen better days, but in order to save a few dollars, I’m willing to put up with the lesser accommodations, especially if it’s a movie I’m somewhat indifferent about or one that I’m seeing to stay out of the heat and kill a summer afternoon rather than because I’m desperate to see the movie itself. I saw Bridesmaids at this theater a couple weeks ago (and I still need to write about that one), and if I bother to see The Hangover 2, it’ll be either at this theater or on TV. But with Super 8, I actually wished I’d seen it at a nicer theater because it’s a movie that is well made and engaging enough to deserve the full theatrical treatment projected onto a big screen with high quality surround sound.
Let me not get carried away, though. The movie is good enough to deserve to been seen in all its glory, but that doesn’t mean it’s the greatest summer movie ever. Basically, it’s intended to feel like an old Steven Spielberg film, and it does achieve some of that feeling, but it also left me with the desire to go back and watch Jurassic Park and E.T. and Raiders of the Lost Ark. Super 8 is good, and it does capture some of the essence of those wonderful Spielberg films, but it also feels a bit like an imitation of them, a forgery of a master artist’s work.
In case you’re unfamiliar with the basic story, I’ll recap here. It’s 1979 in a small Ohio town. Our hero, Joe, is dealing with the death of his mother in a steel mill accident and the newfound reality of living alone with his father, who is unprepared to be a single parent. Summer vacation is starting, and Joe and his best friend Charles are excited to have more time to work on their 8mm zombie movie that they plan to enter in a local film contest (Joe handles makeup and special effects; Charles directs). They sneak out of the house one night to film on a train station platform, and as they film, a train derails. The Army comes to town to clean things up and investigate, and the mystery really begins: what or who was on that train? Why is the Army keeping things quiet? Why do all the dogs in town suddenly want to run away?
Strangely enough, the same elements that work as some of Super 8’s great strengths are also weaknesses. Charles, the young film director, talks about changing his script to add more story because that is what will move an audience. He read an article in a moviemaking magazine about the need for more than just special effects and thrilling adventure. So Charles writes in a wife for the main character, so the audience will understand what’s at stake for him. Charles also realizes that in order to stand a chance at making his movie stand out in the competition, he needs “production value.” So he films as the train passes by and ultimately derails so his film will have more going on than just kids standing around talking. Later, he films in front of the derailed train and near a group of Army guys. The same elements that Charles recognizes as essential to a good film are present throughout Super 8. The dead mother makes the audience more invested in Joe’s character. The conflicts between parents and children add more emotion. The derailing train sequence is a great example of production value, as are the other top notch special effects throughout the rest of the movie.
So if what we go to movies for is to have our emotions played with and to be awed with production value, then Super 8 is a great film. However, I sometimes felt like it was all a bit shallow, like J. J. Abrams, the writer-director, was really just a grown up version of Charles. All he wants to do is have fun making a movie, not because he has a story he feels utterly compelled to tell, but rather because he loves movies and wants to make one like the kind he loves. So the special effects and emotional twists come across as a bit manipulative rather than authentic. Just as Charles wanted to make his version of a Romero film, Abrams wanted to make his version of a Spielberg. I imagine him working on the screenplay and trying to figure out what would make this movie stand out, and just as Charles thinks, “I’ll give the guy a wife,” Abrams thinks, “I’ll give the kid a dead mom.”
It’s hard to explain exactly why I find it a bit dissatisfying. Overall, it is very well made. The audience is as skillfully manipulated as in just about any other movie. And I enjoyed the experience on a whole. Yet I also left feeling a bit empty, like this was only a great movie if I didn’t think too much about it. Or maybe it’s as simple as I mentioned earlier: the move left me really wanting to watch E.T. or Jurassic Park. Super 8 is a great example of just how good Spielberg is, though I can’t explain why he’s so much better than almost everybody else.
Captain America
Once again, as tends to be the case with superhero movies, Captain America was pretty much what I expected it to be. I didn’t know much about this character going in, and so I was intrigued at the set up of the weakling who wants to help his country and do the right thing but is unable to enlist until a brilliant scientist gives him a chance to become part of an experiment to create a new super soldier. After Steve Rogers is transformed from a ninety-eight pound weakling into a super buff fighter capable of helping the Allies destroy the Nazis, the movie takes a turn I wasn’t expecting with a really delightful song and dance routine. But, of course, we must get back to the action when Captain America goes out alone to save his old buddy from the bad guys with the evil plan to take over the world.
The plot from there isn’t too important to recap. The bottom line is that the movie does a good job of being what it is. My one major critique is the same critique I have of a lot of action movies in recent years, and that’s simply that it’s too long. By the final half hour or so, I was ready to be done. I don’t know if I have a short attention span or what, but I generally think ninety minutes is a good length for an action movie, comedy, horror, mystery, whatever. Anything other than a serious character-driven drama should probably be less than two hours. And any single action sequence should probably be no more than ten or fifteen minutes. Now, I wasn’t timing the big climactic action sequence in Captain America, but it sure felt like it went on for a half an hour or so, and I wanted it be done about halfway through.
It’s strange: I don’t have any specific problems with the action sequences. There weren’t any moments that stand out as being gratuitous, but on a whole, it was just too much. I think the tendency in recent years is to always try to make the newest movie bigger than what has come before, but bigger doesn’t mean better. I’d rather have smaller, with more specifically chosen moments that really work instead of throwing every possible event at the screen, hoping that something will be amazing. I have a feeling of déjà vu as I write this. Did I write this same thing about Thor or X-Men? It seems likely.
So here’s my general advice to directors making the next big blockbuster action movie: go for a lean ninety minutes. The last thing you want to do is bore the audience with too much action. Plus, if a movie is ninety minutes instead of over one hundred and twenty, the theaters might be able to squeeze in an extra showing each day, which means the movie could rake in even more money.
The plot from there isn’t too important to recap. The bottom line is that the movie does a good job of being what it is. My one major critique is the same critique I have of a lot of action movies in recent years, and that’s simply that it’s too long. By the final half hour or so, I was ready to be done. I don’t know if I have a short attention span or what, but I generally think ninety minutes is a good length for an action movie, comedy, horror, mystery, whatever. Anything other than a serious character-driven drama should probably be less than two hours. And any single action sequence should probably be no more than ten or fifteen minutes. Now, I wasn’t timing the big climactic action sequence in Captain America, but it sure felt like it went on for a half an hour or so, and I wanted it be done about halfway through.
It’s strange: I don’t have any specific problems with the action sequences. There weren’t any moments that stand out as being gratuitous, but on a whole, it was just too much. I think the tendency in recent years is to always try to make the newest movie bigger than what has come before, but bigger doesn’t mean better. I’d rather have smaller, with more specifically chosen moments that really work instead of throwing every possible event at the screen, hoping that something will be amazing. I have a feeling of déjà vu as I write this. Did I write this same thing about Thor or X-Men? It seems likely.
So here’s my general advice to directors making the next big blockbuster action movie: go for a lean ninety minutes. The last thing you want to do is bore the audience with too much action. Plus, if a movie is ninety minutes instead of over one hundred and twenty, the theaters might be able to squeeze in an extra showing each day, which means the movie could rake in even more money.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
In the past week I watched Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One and Two. Both are good. They’re entertaining and satisfying conclusions to the series. I’ve been a Harry Potter fan for years now, although I was a bit slow to get into them initially.
I remember the first time I ever heard of Harry Potter was when I was in college. I was taking a class on Tolkien (which, unfortunately, I had to drop after the first class because it was an evening class and I was cast in a play that semester so had to attend evening rehearsals). The professor asked if any of us had read the Harry Potter books. There weren’t more than two or three of the books out at that time, and none of the movies had been made yet. I had no idea what Harry Potter even was, and neither did most of the rest of the class. It seems funny to think back on that now since Harry Potter is probably one of the best-known characters in the world.
Within the next couple of years, I heard more about Harry Potter. My father is a pastor, so I heard reference to the controversy within the conservative Christian community about how dangerous it was to allow children to read books about witches. My parents picked up the books to see what the hubbub was about and discovered how enjoyable they were. At some point, when I was on summer vacation maybe, I borrowed the audiobooks from my mom and got caught up in the fun stories (I still think audiobook is the way to experience Harry Potter; Jim Dale is an amazing reader). The first movie came out the Thanksgiving after I finished college, and I was living back at my parents’ house, so we all saw it together (there’s really nothing that makes one recognize his failure to truly enter adulthood like being twenty-two, living with his parents, and going with them to see a children’s movie). That first movie was decent if a bit too long and slow.
The next movie was likewise acceptable, but nothing particularly special. But by the third movie, the series really took off. And the final two really cement the franchise’s place in film history. It’s truly a phenomenal achievement to have made eight consistently high-quality films, especially when the beginning of the series is the weakest point.
I don’t really have too much to say about these final two films. I’m sure anybody reading this either already knows how good these movies are or doesn’t care and isn’t interested in the first place. There seems to be little middle ground with Harry Potter.
The one negative comment I’ll share about Deathly Hallows Part Two is that it has jumped onto the 3D bandwagon, which I feel is a mistake. It’s tough to know whether 3D is really the future of cinema or just a short-term fad. I suspect it’s a fad. I’ve seen a few movies in 3D, but typically I’d just as soon save the extra money and watch it in 2D. I think in the best cases 3D adds little, but in the worst cases it is an annoying distraction. I watched Deathly Hallows in 2D, but there were a few moments in the film where I was distracted by elements that seemed to be deliberately included to take advantage of 3D. There’s a roller coaster-like sequence in the goblin bank that is filmed like it’s supposed to simulate being on a ride at a theme park. Then a dragon lunges straight at the camera. I’m sure it looks cool in 3D, but the problem is that these moments distract from the story. I’d rather have filmmakers simply tell their story without trying to make things cool or to feel the need to use new technology simply because it exists.
I remember the first time I ever heard of Harry Potter was when I was in college. I was taking a class on Tolkien (which, unfortunately, I had to drop after the first class because it was an evening class and I was cast in a play that semester so had to attend evening rehearsals). The professor asked if any of us had read the Harry Potter books. There weren’t more than two or three of the books out at that time, and none of the movies had been made yet. I had no idea what Harry Potter even was, and neither did most of the rest of the class. It seems funny to think back on that now since Harry Potter is probably one of the best-known characters in the world.
Within the next couple of years, I heard more about Harry Potter. My father is a pastor, so I heard reference to the controversy within the conservative Christian community about how dangerous it was to allow children to read books about witches. My parents picked up the books to see what the hubbub was about and discovered how enjoyable they were. At some point, when I was on summer vacation maybe, I borrowed the audiobooks from my mom and got caught up in the fun stories (I still think audiobook is the way to experience Harry Potter; Jim Dale is an amazing reader). The first movie came out the Thanksgiving after I finished college, and I was living back at my parents’ house, so we all saw it together (there’s really nothing that makes one recognize his failure to truly enter adulthood like being twenty-two, living with his parents, and going with them to see a children’s movie). That first movie was decent if a bit too long and slow.
The next movie was likewise acceptable, but nothing particularly special. But by the third movie, the series really took off. And the final two really cement the franchise’s place in film history. It’s truly a phenomenal achievement to have made eight consistently high-quality films, especially when the beginning of the series is the weakest point.
I don’t really have too much to say about these final two films. I’m sure anybody reading this either already knows how good these movies are or doesn’t care and isn’t interested in the first place. There seems to be little middle ground with Harry Potter.
The one negative comment I’ll share about Deathly Hallows Part Two is that it has jumped onto the 3D bandwagon, which I feel is a mistake. It’s tough to know whether 3D is really the future of cinema or just a short-term fad. I suspect it’s a fad. I’ve seen a few movies in 3D, but typically I’d just as soon save the extra money and watch it in 2D. I think in the best cases 3D adds little, but in the worst cases it is an annoying distraction. I watched Deathly Hallows in 2D, but there were a few moments in the film where I was distracted by elements that seemed to be deliberately included to take advantage of 3D. There’s a roller coaster-like sequence in the goblin bank that is filmed like it’s supposed to simulate being on a ride at a theme park. Then a dragon lunges straight at the camera. I’m sure it looks cool in 3D, but the problem is that these moments distract from the story. I’d rather have filmmakers simply tell their story without trying to make things cool or to feel the need to use new technology simply because it exists.
Sunday, July 17, 2011
Catfish
Another recent movie whose plot centers on Facebook is Catfish. The basic set up of the story is a twenty-something New York photographer named Yaniv Schulman (Nev, pronounced “neeve,” for short), who has a photo of his painted by Abby, an eight-year-old girl from Michigan. The girl contacts Nev, who develops a relationship with her family through e-mails, phone calls, and Facebook. Over time, Nev becomes particularly close to Megan, Abby’s older sister. But as they get closer, and Nev becomes more interested in taking the relationship from the virtual into the real world, he develops suspicions about whether Megan’s Facebook identity truly represents who she is. I won’t spoil the twists and turns the movie takes from there because I don’t want to spoil them for a first time viewer. The major theme of the film is identity and how we can forge new identities in a way that would have been difficult or impossible without our current technology, like Facebook.
There are several aspects of the film that sucked me in. One is simply the idea of relationships flowering via Facebook and how we can get to know people in a different way through this technology. I have friends whom I know in real life whom I’ve learned much more about through Facebook. I even have one set of friends whom I haven’t seen in years and whose courtship I watched unfold via Facebook. We aren’t close enough that I’ve sought out all the details of how they got together, but I enjoyed reading posts from each of them and piecing together the puzzle pieces as they moved from separate cities to the same city and then eventually announced their engagement, marriage, pregnancy, and the birth of their first child. It’s probably been close to fifteen years since I’ve actually spoken to either of them, but I feel like I am connected to them still through their online personas.
But do I really know about my friends’ lives? Maybe not. And how easy would it be to update one’s status with false information? I could easily tell my old friends from Arizona that I’m living in Paris right now or that I’m married with children or any number of untrue things. And who would doubt me?
As I watched Catfish, I pondered these things and thought how I must recommend this movie to my friends because it touches on some significant issues of our time. But I also thought as I watched the movie that it is not a great film as far as the quality of filmmaking goes. It is a low-budget, independent film, so I didn’t expect the same high gloss that I got from The Social Network. I was fine with the low-resolution images and shaky camera work. And, in fact, the film presents itself as a documentary, so the quality of filmmaking is completely justified as part of the movie itself. But then once I finished watching the movie, I looked up more about it and was surprised and a bit discouraged by what I read online.
I took the movie to be a fake documentary, like This is Spinal Tap or The Office. I thought it was an easy way to make a movie with a low budget. But what I discovered with some Googling is that the filmmakers insist that the movie is authentic. They admit to recreating a few close up images of computer screens, but insist that the story itself is completely true. This I find difficult to accept. And I’m not alone. Evidently, immediately after the film’s screening at the Sundance Film Festival, accusations began about its falsehood. There is ongoing debate about how much of the film is real and how much was staged, whether the filmmakers knew the truth early on and manipulated the situation for the sake of an interesting film or whether Nev was simply a love struck naïf (I actually wondered if Yaniv Schulman genuinely goes by Nev or if Nev was his persona for the film to underscore his naiveté). This controversy surprised me because I simply assumed early on that the movie was entirely fictional.
The filmmakers have defended their product with the claim that if Catfish is a hoax then Nev must be the greatest actor since Marlon Brando to pull off such a convincing performance, and they must be the greatest screenwriters in Hollywood to concoct such a convincing storyline. But the truth is that neither of those is true. In fact, as I was watching the film, I thought that Nev was not an especially adept actor as he often seemed to be “acting” the way a lot of people do in low budget indies. He seemed to be a little better than the guys in Clerks, but certainly didn’t achieve the believability of Brando. And the story has some interesting twists, but it also feels very plotted, very structured. The twists occur in all the right places. There’s the classic three-act film structure in place, so, no, these guys aren’t the greatest writers in Hollywood.
But the controversy about the reality of the film further underscores its themes about reality and identity, so that’s interesting, right? I don’t know. I find myself kind of annoyed by it. If the film is good enough on its merits as a film, it shouldn’t matter whether it is a real documentary or a work of fiction. I am reminded of similar controversies in the book world, James Frey, for instance, or the young adult anonymous diary Go Ask Alice. The question in my mind with such works is whether we would accept them and think them of quality if they were presented to us honestly. I have not read Frey’s book, but my understanding is that his book was not good enough to stand up as a quality novel, so it was only through trickery, passing the story off as true, that he achieved success with it. I enjoyed Go Ask Alice when I was a kid, but thinking back on it now, I can see that it is fairly unrealistic and probably would not hold up except as an overly moralistic and didactic children’s book if it weren’t presented as true. So what about Catfish?
I watched it thinking it was a fictional story, and I liked it just fine. But as I think back on it, pondering this question of whether it is real or not, I find more problems with it than I might have if I had simply accepted it as fiction to start with. The story feels maybe too plotted; the acting is somewhat too stilted. If judged on the standards of every movie out there, it isn’t a great work. If judged on the standards of a documentary, maybe it does hold more weight if it’s all true. But if judged on the standards of an independent film, made by filmmakers who felt they had a story to tell and wanted to find a way within their limited means to tell that story, I think it holds up. It’s a shame that the filmmakers don’t have the confidence to accept their creation for what it is.
Or maybe I’m wrong and they’re telling the truth that it’s authentic. I suspect that in the coming years, people will look back on this film as a small example of a hoax, along with Frey and Alice. Maybe now that the movie has gone through its theatrical release, they will admit that it was all a promotional stunt like the claims that The Blair Witch Project was real. I hope so because I think the question of its authenticity is distracting and the movie is worth considering on its own merits, even though they have their limitations.
There are several aspects of the film that sucked me in. One is simply the idea of relationships flowering via Facebook and how we can get to know people in a different way through this technology. I have friends whom I know in real life whom I’ve learned much more about through Facebook. I even have one set of friends whom I haven’t seen in years and whose courtship I watched unfold via Facebook. We aren’t close enough that I’ve sought out all the details of how they got together, but I enjoyed reading posts from each of them and piecing together the puzzle pieces as they moved from separate cities to the same city and then eventually announced their engagement, marriage, pregnancy, and the birth of their first child. It’s probably been close to fifteen years since I’ve actually spoken to either of them, but I feel like I am connected to them still through their online personas.
But do I really know about my friends’ lives? Maybe not. And how easy would it be to update one’s status with false information? I could easily tell my old friends from Arizona that I’m living in Paris right now or that I’m married with children or any number of untrue things. And who would doubt me?
As I watched Catfish, I pondered these things and thought how I must recommend this movie to my friends because it touches on some significant issues of our time. But I also thought as I watched the movie that it is not a great film as far as the quality of filmmaking goes. It is a low-budget, independent film, so I didn’t expect the same high gloss that I got from The Social Network. I was fine with the low-resolution images and shaky camera work. And, in fact, the film presents itself as a documentary, so the quality of filmmaking is completely justified as part of the movie itself. But then once I finished watching the movie, I looked up more about it and was surprised and a bit discouraged by what I read online.
I took the movie to be a fake documentary, like This is Spinal Tap or The Office. I thought it was an easy way to make a movie with a low budget. But what I discovered with some Googling is that the filmmakers insist that the movie is authentic. They admit to recreating a few close up images of computer screens, but insist that the story itself is completely true. This I find difficult to accept. And I’m not alone. Evidently, immediately after the film’s screening at the Sundance Film Festival, accusations began about its falsehood. There is ongoing debate about how much of the film is real and how much was staged, whether the filmmakers knew the truth early on and manipulated the situation for the sake of an interesting film or whether Nev was simply a love struck naïf (I actually wondered if Yaniv Schulman genuinely goes by Nev or if Nev was his persona for the film to underscore his naiveté). This controversy surprised me because I simply assumed early on that the movie was entirely fictional.
The filmmakers have defended their product with the claim that if Catfish is a hoax then Nev must be the greatest actor since Marlon Brando to pull off such a convincing performance, and they must be the greatest screenwriters in Hollywood to concoct such a convincing storyline. But the truth is that neither of those is true. In fact, as I was watching the film, I thought that Nev was not an especially adept actor as he often seemed to be “acting” the way a lot of people do in low budget indies. He seemed to be a little better than the guys in Clerks, but certainly didn’t achieve the believability of Brando. And the story has some interesting twists, but it also feels very plotted, very structured. The twists occur in all the right places. There’s the classic three-act film structure in place, so, no, these guys aren’t the greatest writers in Hollywood.
But the controversy about the reality of the film further underscores its themes about reality and identity, so that’s interesting, right? I don’t know. I find myself kind of annoyed by it. If the film is good enough on its merits as a film, it shouldn’t matter whether it is a real documentary or a work of fiction. I am reminded of similar controversies in the book world, James Frey, for instance, or the young adult anonymous diary Go Ask Alice. The question in my mind with such works is whether we would accept them and think them of quality if they were presented to us honestly. I have not read Frey’s book, but my understanding is that his book was not good enough to stand up as a quality novel, so it was only through trickery, passing the story off as true, that he achieved success with it. I enjoyed Go Ask Alice when I was a kid, but thinking back on it now, I can see that it is fairly unrealistic and probably would not hold up except as an overly moralistic and didactic children’s book if it weren’t presented as true. So what about Catfish?
I watched it thinking it was a fictional story, and I liked it just fine. But as I think back on it, pondering this question of whether it is real or not, I find more problems with it than I might have if I had simply accepted it as fiction to start with. The story feels maybe too plotted; the acting is somewhat too stilted. If judged on the standards of every movie out there, it isn’t a great work. If judged on the standards of a documentary, maybe it does hold more weight if it’s all true. But if judged on the standards of an independent film, made by filmmakers who felt they had a story to tell and wanted to find a way within their limited means to tell that story, I think it holds up. It’s a shame that the filmmakers don’t have the confidence to accept their creation for what it is.
Or maybe I’m wrong and they’re telling the truth that it’s authentic. I suspect that in the coming years, people will look back on this film as a small example of a hoax, along with Frey and Alice. Maybe now that the movie has gone through its theatrical release, they will admit that it was all a promotional stunt like the claims that The Blair Witch Project was real. I hope so because I think the question of its authenticity is distracting and the movie is worth considering on its own merits, even though they have their limitations.
The Social Network
I recently watched two films with plots centered on Facebook: The Social Network and Catfish. These two movies are certainly of our current time. They tell about the world as it is today. I was planning on writing one post about both films, but once I started, I realized I had too many thoughts bouncing around my head about The Social Network, so Catfish will have to wait. And even as I finish this post, I realize I have only scratched the surface of what I could say about The Social Network. I guess this is why I love movies so much. The great ones get my mind spinning.
It is interesting to think about how a movie that is so much about the present will hold up in the future. The Social Network was a frontrunner for the best picture Oscar this past year, which isn’t necessarily an indicator of a film’s lasting artistic merit, but I think The Social Network will still be recognized as a great film years from now.
When I saw it in the theater last fall, I thought it was gripping, which isn’t the adjective you might expect about a movie that is made up of scenes of deposition rooms and scenes of guys sitting at computers. But this movie absolutely holds up as entertainment. The script is tight, the dialogue buzzes with energy, the performances are successful, the direction and cinematography never left me bored. Just across the board, this was first rate. But when I watched it a second time a couple days ago and stopped to think more about the film as an artifact of our age and how it fits with other films and stories of other times, that is when the movie really stands out to me as a major achievement of the art form.
The movie that The Social Network most reminds me of is Citizen Kane. Both are stories about a man’s rise to wealth and prominence as the head of a major media outlet told through the testimony of those who knew him. In the case of Citizen Kane, the testimony comes from interviews conducted after Kane’s death while in The Social Network, the interviews are legal depositions of those who are suing Mark Zuckerberg. One of the big differences, of course, is that Kane dies at the beginning of the film and Zuckerberg is alive throughout. Furthermore, Kane lives a whole life, which we see from childhood through death, but we only see a period of a few years in Zuckerberg’s young life. The other major difference is certainly the medium that these two men work in. Kane was a newspaper tycoon; Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook. When I sift through all of these differences, I come to a conclusion: with the change in technology, the pace of life has altered.
Back when newspapers were a major influence on the world, the traditional story of a “great man” was the story of years, decades, an entire life. Now that newspapers are out of date as soon as they are printed and we rely on instant information constantly uploading on screens in front of us, the “great man” story takes place within the period of a few years. The pace of our lives has accelerated.
There is a term, which I have heard attributed to Hitchcock: the MacGuffin. This is the thing that sets a plot in motion. It’s the Maltese Falcon that everybody wants to possess, the bomb that the hero and villain both want to control. Citizen Kane has Rosebud at its center. The Social Network has Facebook itself and the billions of dollars generated from Facebook, but another possible view The Social Network’s MacGuffin is the girl who dumps Zuckerberg in the opening scene. She represents his hopes and dreams. At the heart of his story is a lonely guy who wants to get a girl to notice him. He wants friends, acceptance. He wants to be important and recognized. He wants comfort. In these ways, he is very much like Kane.
But here’s where the aspect of life moving at an accelerated pace becomes very interesting. Kane was about an entire life from birth to death. The Social Network is about a young man in his early twenties. Kane was on his deathbed full of regret, whispering “Rosebud.” The Social Network ends with Zuckerberg reflecting back on what he has lost. It was too late for Kane to change, but Mark Zuckerberg is not yet thirty. In this way, I see The Social Network as a much more hopeful film. Zuckerberg doesn’t have to die with regret. He still has the possibility open of truly becoming a great man.
It is interesting to think about how a movie that is so much about the present will hold up in the future. The Social Network was a frontrunner for the best picture Oscar this past year, which isn’t necessarily an indicator of a film’s lasting artistic merit, but I think The Social Network will still be recognized as a great film years from now.
When I saw it in the theater last fall, I thought it was gripping, which isn’t the adjective you might expect about a movie that is made up of scenes of deposition rooms and scenes of guys sitting at computers. But this movie absolutely holds up as entertainment. The script is tight, the dialogue buzzes with energy, the performances are successful, the direction and cinematography never left me bored. Just across the board, this was first rate. But when I watched it a second time a couple days ago and stopped to think more about the film as an artifact of our age and how it fits with other films and stories of other times, that is when the movie really stands out to me as a major achievement of the art form.
The movie that The Social Network most reminds me of is Citizen Kane. Both are stories about a man’s rise to wealth and prominence as the head of a major media outlet told through the testimony of those who knew him. In the case of Citizen Kane, the testimony comes from interviews conducted after Kane’s death while in The Social Network, the interviews are legal depositions of those who are suing Mark Zuckerberg. One of the big differences, of course, is that Kane dies at the beginning of the film and Zuckerberg is alive throughout. Furthermore, Kane lives a whole life, which we see from childhood through death, but we only see a period of a few years in Zuckerberg’s young life. The other major difference is certainly the medium that these two men work in. Kane was a newspaper tycoon; Zuckerberg is the founder of Facebook. When I sift through all of these differences, I come to a conclusion: with the change in technology, the pace of life has altered.
Back when newspapers were a major influence on the world, the traditional story of a “great man” was the story of years, decades, an entire life. Now that newspapers are out of date as soon as they are printed and we rely on instant information constantly uploading on screens in front of us, the “great man” story takes place within the period of a few years. The pace of our lives has accelerated.
There is a term, which I have heard attributed to Hitchcock: the MacGuffin. This is the thing that sets a plot in motion. It’s the Maltese Falcon that everybody wants to possess, the bomb that the hero and villain both want to control. Citizen Kane has Rosebud at its center. The Social Network has Facebook itself and the billions of dollars generated from Facebook, but another possible view The Social Network’s MacGuffin is the girl who dumps Zuckerberg in the opening scene. She represents his hopes and dreams. At the heart of his story is a lonely guy who wants to get a girl to notice him. He wants friends, acceptance. He wants to be important and recognized. He wants comfort. In these ways, he is very much like Kane.
But here’s where the aspect of life moving at an accelerated pace becomes very interesting. Kane was about an entire life from birth to death. The Social Network is about a young man in his early twenties. Kane was on his deathbed full of regret, whispering “Rosebud.” The Social Network ends with Zuckerberg reflecting back on what he has lost. It was too late for Kane to change, but Mark Zuckerberg is not yet thirty. In this way, I see The Social Network as a much more hopeful film. Zuckerberg doesn’t have to die with regret. He still has the possibility open of truly becoming a great man.
Monday, June 27, 2011
Slaughterhouse-Five
Another movie I’ve been intending to write about and haven’t gotten to yet is Slaughterhouse-Five. This is another one directed by George Roy Hill. I think I watched this right around the same time as The Sting (maybe even the same day), but I wanted to wait and ponder the movie a bit before writing about it, and then I went out of town and was dealing with other life issues, and suddenly a few weeks had passed and I still hadn’t written about it.
I’m a bit reluctant to frame my thoughts of Slaughterhouse-Five in the old “book vs. movie” frame. That’s such a tired discussion, but it’s sometimes inevitable. I agree with the idea that the book is nearly always better than the movie. There a few instances where the movie is so incredibly good, it’s close to being a match for the book but still falls short (To Kill a Mockingbird and The Remains of the Day, for instance). There are a few where the movie actually surpasses the book (The Godfather, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and maybe The Silence of the Lambs). But usually, that cliché that “the book is better” is true. I remember how disappointed I was when I watched the movie Atonement. I loved the book so much that I knew the movie wouldn’t equal it, and even though I feel fairly certain the movie was actually fine, I couldn’t help comparing the two and feeling incredibly let down.
When I found out that Slaughterhouse-Five had been made into a movie, I was surprised. I read the book a few years ago and loved it, but it struck me as the kind of book that would be nearly impossible to adapt into a movie. So I was curious and a bit reluctant to watch the movie. And, to my surprise, the movie struck me as a good adaptation.
The book centers on a character who is “unstuck in time,” meaning he travels back and forth throughout his life. One moment he is twenty, the next he is fifty. He doesn’t have any control over where he goes or when. He just slips around. This, of course, leads to all sorts of questions about free will, one’s ability to control the path of one’s own life. Billy Pilgrim has no real choice about how his life will unfold, even as he’s living it. He is merely a spectator observing his life as it happens to him. This structure of moving back and forth through time and space, and having a lack of grounding does not strike me as ideally suited for a movie, but it actually worked reasonably well. There is a certain amount of confusion trying to piece together how everything fits together, but the movie unfolds for an audience much like life itself unfolds for Billy Pilgrim: scenes out of sequence but with an inevitability to them.
One major difference between the book and the movie is that I don’t remember feeling a sense of ambiguity from the book about whether Billy Pilgrim was genuinely “unstuck in time” or whether he was suffering some delusions; but in the movie, I think one could reasonably argue that toward the end of his life, Billy has become mentally unstable and is simply suffering hallucinations and confusing memory with the present. The thing that works best for the movie, however, to tip the balance toward the view that Billy is actually suffering from some time travel phenomenon rather than mental illness is the performance of the lead actor, Michael Sacks. He plays the character throughout at every age, and although the character grows older, there is a constant innocence to Billy, a naiveté that shines through. It becomes easy to believe that he accepts his fate, that he understands he has no control over the passage of time around him, of where and when he’ll be next. Sometimes, he struggles with it, but ultimately, he seems to accept his lot and move forward and backward passively. That passivity is tough to keep engaging, but it works. Had Sacks tackled the role with more dynamism, the film might have failed. It strikes me as a performance that is perfect in its simplicity, but would be easy to ignore or dismiss. I looked up information on Michael Sacks after watching the film and was disappointed to discover that he made few movies and retired from acting nearly twenty years ago. I wonder if his performance was dismissed as too simple and not engaging and this lead role in a significant film actually scuttled his career rather than launching it. If so, that’s a shame because he is just right for this role.
There is another difference that stood out to me as well. One thing I particularly like about the book is the metafictional aspect of it. It begins with a discussion by the narrator, seemingly the author Kurt Vonnegut, about how he has wanted to write this book for a long time and has struggled. This sense of reality outside the book adds an extra layer to it, a recognition that the fiction is fiction, but a sense that there is a larger purpose being explored through fiction. Without that frame, the movie feels somewhat lacking in comparison.
One additional element that stands out to me about the movie is the occasional lapse in point-of-view. We follow Billy Pilgrim throughout his life, through World War II, through married life afterward, all the way to a distant planet when he is abducted by aliens, and even to the moment of his death. The story demands a close point-of-view limited to that character’s experience, yet that isn’t what the movie gives us. The movie begins with Billy’s daughter and son-in-law, and there is an extended comic sequence late in the movie that follows Billy’s wife. These shifts away from Billy’s consciousness feel out of place and become distracting flaws in the film’s coherence.
Although I hate to phrase my thoughts quite so simply, the bottom line is that the book is better than the movie. But the movie is worth checking out in its own right. I would be curious what somebody who had never read the book would make of the movie, whether they would appreciate it more since they wouldn’t be comparing it or if they might appreciate it less since they lacked going in the understanding of the unusual chronology. Although it falls short, it’s still a good attempt to adapt a book that was not written to be easily adaptable.
I’m a bit reluctant to frame my thoughts of Slaughterhouse-Five in the old “book vs. movie” frame. That’s such a tired discussion, but it’s sometimes inevitable. I agree with the idea that the book is nearly always better than the movie. There a few instances where the movie is so incredibly good, it’s close to being a match for the book but still falls short (To Kill a Mockingbird and The Remains of the Day, for instance). There are a few where the movie actually surpasses the book (The Godfather, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and maybe The Silence of the Lambs). But usually, that cliché that “the book is better” is true. I remember how disappointed I was when I watched the movie Atonement. I loved the book so much that I knew the movie wouldn’t equal it, and even though I feel fairly certain the movie was actually fine, I couldn’t help comparing the two and feeling incredibly let down.
When I found out that Slaughterhouse-Five had been made into a movie, I was surprised. I read the book a few years ago and loved it, but it struck me as the kind of book that would be nearly impossible to adapt into a movie. So I was curious and a bit reluctant to watch the movie. And, to my surprise, the movie struck me as a good adaptation.
The book centers on a character who is “unstuck in time,” meaning he travels back and forth throughout his life. One moment he is twenty, the next he is fifty. He doesn’t have any control over where he goes or when. He just slips around. This, of course, leads to all sorts of questions about free will, one’s ability to control the path of one’s own life. Billy Pilgrim has no real choice about how his life will unfold, even as he’s living it. He is merely a spectator observing his life as it happens to him. This structure of moving back and forth through time and space, and having a lack of grounding does not strike me as ideally suited for a movie, but it actually worked reasonably well. There is a certain amount of confusion trying to piece together how everything fits together, but the movie unfolds for an audience much like life itself unfolds for Billy Pilgrim: scenes out of sequence but with an inevitability to them.
One major difference between the book and the movie is that I don’t remember feeling a sense of ambiguity from the book about whether Billy Pilgrim was genuinely “unstuck in time” or whether he was suffering some delusions; but in the movie, I think one could reasonably argue that toward the end of his life, Billy has become mentally unstable and is simply suffering hallucinations and confusing memory with the present. The thing that works best for the movie, however, to tip the balance toward the view that Billy is actually suffering from some time travel phenomenon rather than mental illness is the performance of the lead actor, Michael Sacks. He plays the character throughout at every age, and although the character grows older, there is a constant innocence to Billy, a naiveté that shines through. It becomes easy to believe that he accepts his fate, that he understands he has no control over the passage of time around him, of where and when he’ll be next. Sometimes, he struggles with it, but ultimately, he seems to accept his lot and move forward and backward passively. That passivity is tough to keep engaging, but it works. Had Sacks tackled the role with more dynamism, the film might have failed. It strikes me as a performance that is perfect in its simplicity, but would be easy to ignore or dismiss. I looked up information on Michael Sacks after watching the film and was disappointed to discover that he made few movies and retired from acting nearly twenty years ago. I wonder if his performance was dismissed as too simple and not engaging and this lead role in a significant film actually scuttled his career rather than launching it. If so, that’s a shame because he is just right for this role.
There is another difference that stood out to me as well. One thing I particularly like about the book is the metafictional aspect of it. It begins with a discussion by the narrator, seemingly the author Kurt Vonnegut, about how he has wanted to write this book for a long time and has struggled. This sense of reality outside the book adds an extra layer to it, a recognition that the fiction is fiction, but a sense that there is a larger purpose being explored through fiction. Without that frame, the movie feels somewhat lacking in comparison.
One additional element that stands out to me about the movie is the occasional lapse in point-of-view. We follow Billy Pilgrim throughout his life, through World War II, through married life afterward, all the way to a distant planet when he is abducted by aliens, and even to the moment of his death. The story demands a close point-of-view limited to that character’s experience, yet that isn’t what the movie gives us. The movie begins with Billy’s daughter and son-in-law, and there is an extended comic sequence late in the movie that follows Billy’s wife. These shifts away from Billy’s consciousness feel out of place and become distracting flaws in the film’s coherence.
Although I hate to phrase my thoughts quite so simply, the bottom line is that the book is better than the movie. But the movie is worth checking out in its own right. I would be curious what somebody who had never read the book would make of the movie, whether they would appreciate it more since they wouldn’t be comparing it or if they might appreciate it less since they lacked going in the understanding of the unusual chronology. Although it falls short, it’s still a good attempt to adapt a book that was not written to be easily adaptable.
X-Men: First Class
It just occurred to me that I haven’t written about X-Men: First Class yet. I guess I wanted to wait a day or two and then it slipped my mind. I’m not sure if that’s a comment on the movie itself, but maybe it is. Maybe that’s a common characteristic of this type of big blockbuster summer movie. And actually, as I think back on the other X-Men movies (I’ve watched all the previous ones), I don’t have any strong impressions. I basically remember finding them enjoyable enough (except that Wolverine one, which was definitely below my basic expectations for comic book movies, and my expectations are not that high). I can picture the characters more or less, but I’m having trouble thinking of a single scene from the first few X-Men movies. I really couldn’t describe the plots at this point other than the simple version: the good guys fight the bad guys.
It’s only been a few weeks since I saw the newest addition to the X-Men franchise, and I remember more about it than its predecessors, but my ultimate verdict is pretty much the same as for most of this type of movie: it’s fun and worth seeing but not especially memorable.
Here’s a bit more detail if you’re debating seeing it and for some reason you find my perspective influential.
The characters. There are too many characters to really get to know most of them in any detail, but they’re easy enough to keep straight because of their different mutant powers, unlike some movies where the mess of characters becomes impossible to untangle because they all look alike and act the same and have no particular distinguishing features.
The actors. I’ve read a lot of reviews that comment on how good Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy are in this movie. James McAvoy is fine. In everything I’ve seen him in, he’s fine, but he’s never really stood out to me as particularly exceptional. Michael Fassbender, on the other hand, is phenomenal. He’s intense, with a complex potion of emotions that really make the character engaging. Ultimately, I felt like the transition the character makes to become the villainous Magneto was a bit abrupt and obligatory, but still the performance made the movie.
The Setting. I liked the 1960s setting. I wonder now, however, what they’ll do in future installments. Will they continue in the ‘60s or jump around in time a bit? Will they make movies in the modern setting alongside more prequels? Another thing I’ve read a few times in reviews is that this film had a 1960s James Bond vibe to it, which I agree with, and that was part of the fun (I am a fan of Bond flicks, which are a lot like this type of comic book movie in also being entertaining but highly forgettable). Going back to Michael Fassbender: he would make a heck of a James Bond. I know that franchise is currently in some trouble due to financial difficulties at the studio, so it may be a few years before another one comes along. If they decide Daniel Craig is too old by the time they’re ready for another, Michael Fassbender would be a good choice as the next Bond.
Pace. The movie felt a bit too long. It dragged in the middle and picked back up by the end. I read that the director had said he liked having so many characters because when one story thread began to drag, he could switch to another one. But it seems a sign of trouble if any story threads are dragging, and sure enough that was a problem here, but not a huge one. The movie could have been tighter. And if they release an extended director’s cut, I suspect it will be best avoided.
In the end, this is a movie I might not bother watching again, extended director’s cut or not. And actually, I don’t think I’ve seen any of the previous X-Men movies more than once, so it’s likely that this will be one timer for me as well. Thor felt the same way. But that’s fine. Sometimes I really enjoy just sitting back and watching something that distracts me from my life for a couple of hours, even if I soon forget quite what happened in the story.
It’s only been a few weeks since I saw the newest addition to the X-Men franchise, and I remember more about it than its predecessors, but my ultimate verdict is pretty much the same as for most of this type of movie: it’s fun and worth seeing but not especially memorable.
Here’s a bit more detail if you’re debating seeing it and for some reason you find my perspective influential.
The characters. There are too many characters to really get to know most of them in any detail, but they’re easy enough to keep straight because of their different mutant powers, unlike some movies where the mess of characters becomes impossible to untangle because they all look alike and act the same and have no particular distinguishing features.
The actors. I’ve read a lot of reviews that comment on how good Michael Fassbender and James McAvoy are in this movie. James McAvoy is fine. In everything I’ve seen him in, he’s fine, but he’s never really stood out to me as particularly exceptional. Michael Fassbender, on the other hand, is phenomenal. He’s intense, with a complex potion of emotions that really make the character engaging. Ultimately, I felt like the transition the character makes to become the villainous Magneto was a bit abrupt and obligatory, but still the performance made the movie.
The Setting. I liked the 1960s setting. I wonder now, however, what they’ll do in future installments. Will they continue in the ‘60s or jump around in time a bit? Will they make movies in the modern setting alongside more prequels? Another thing I’ve read a few times in reviews is that this film had a 1960s James Bond vibe to it, which I agree with, and that was part of the fun (I am a fan of Bond flicks, which are a lot like this type of comic book movie in also being entertaining but highly forgettable). Going back to Michael Fassbender: he would make a heck of a James Bond. I know that franchise is currently in some trouble due to financial difficulties at the studio, so it may be a few years before another one comes along. If they decide Daniel Craig is too old by the time they’re ready for another, Michael Fassbender would be a good choice as the next Bond.
Pace. The movie felt a bit too long. It dragged in the middle and picked back up by the end. I read that the director had said he liked having so many characters because when one story thread began to drag, he could switch to another one. But it seems a sign of trouble if any story threads are dragging, and sure enough that was a problem here, but not a huge one. The movie could have been tighter. And if they release an extended director’s cut, I suspect it will be best avoided.
In the end, this is a movie I might not bother watching again, extended director’s cut or not. And actually, I don’t think I’ve seen any of the previous X-Men movies more than once, so it’s likely that this will be one timer for me as well. Thor felt the same way. But that’s fine. Sometimes I really enjoy just sitting back and watching something that distracts me from my life for a couple of hours, even if I soon forget quite what happened in the story.
Thursday, June 2, 2011
The Sting
This past week has been a weird one for me. I broke up with my girlfriend and have been going through the emotions of dealing with that. Fortunately, I’m not slipping into something as serious as a major depressive episode, but I am certainly dealing with a down mood. And for me, dealing with a bad mood often means in part trying to distract myself from overanalyzing everything. Unlike when I was sick a couple weeks ago, I have also been doing a lot of reading this past week, which has helped, but movies are definitely a part of my recovery process too. I didn’t want to watch anything too relevant to my current woes, so no romances at the moment. Instead, I’ve been watching quite a few cheap horror movies. I think I’ll hold off on discussing those for the moment, however, and deal with all of them in one big post since I’m still in the process of going through them. But to supplement my desire for brainless horror fun, I also watched a classic I’ve never seen before: The Sting.
The Sting has been on my list of movies I need to watch for years. I enjoyed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and figured this Oscar-winning second team up of Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and director George Roy Hill was definitely worth checking out. But, as often happens, it took me years to bother getting around to watching it. Finally, yesterday, I was moping around, feeling down and tired and in the mood to watch something other than a cheesy horror movie, so I checked to see what movies were available On Demand (man, modern technology can be great sometimes!). The Sting was listed, and it seemed like just the type of fun movie to suit me.
In general, I like movies about con men. There’s just something fun about the twists and turns of double crosses and tricks involved in grifting. There is a weird issue, though, with such movies in that the protagonist con men are essentially bad guys, right? They are criminals swindling people out of their money and, therefore, should not have our sympathy. And unlike, say, gangster movies like The Godfather, where the protagonists are understood to be villains and the interesting thing is to watch how they descend into villainy despite being family men and having some redeeming qualities, con men don’t tend to feel so much like antiheroes. They feel like heroes. They win like heroes, right? Isn’t it kind of the same thrill to watch the con man’s scheme come to fruition as it is watching the hero of a sports movie win after training so hard? But con men shouldn’t be upheld as heroes. They are criminals, after all. So how to reconcile this is one of the big challenges of this type of movie.
I remember watching Matchstick Men several years ago and thinking about this issue then. (I’ll spoil the ending here since that movie wasn’t so great that you might care too much at this point). Matchstick Men’s method of dealing with this concern was to have the main character ultimately get conned himself and thus receive his comeuppance, which I think then makes it a bit more palatable that we’ve been enjoying his swindles earlier on. The Sting has a different way of dealing with this problem, however, and that is to have the victim of the big con be a worse villain than our heroes. If the guy getting swindled deserves to get swindled, then we have no real moral objection to our heroes being criminals too.
Anyway, the big con is complex, and there are twists and turns along the way. Paul Newman and Robert Redford are so likable that even if they were swindling little old ladies out of their retirement money, we’d probably still want to root for them. There’s humor and action and even some touching moments. Ultimately, it’s just a straight out fun movie. And if you’re ever feeling down and want to be distracted for a couple of hours with old fashioned, well put together entertainment, you could do a lot worse than The Sting.
The Sting has been on my list of movies I need to watch for years. I enjoyed Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and figured this Oscar-winning second team up of Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and director George Roy Hill was definitely worth checking out. But, as often happens, it took me years to bother getting around to watching it. Finally, yesterday, I was moping around, feeling down and tired and in the mood to watch something other than a cheesy horror movie, so I checked to see what movies were available On Demand (man, modern technology can be great sometimes!). The Sting was listed, and it seemed like just the type of fun movie to suit me.
In general, I like movies about con men. There’s just something fun about the twists and turns of double crosses and tricks involved in grifting. There is a weird issue, though, with such movies in that the protagonist con men are essentially bad guys, right? They are criminals swindling people out of their money and, therefore, should not have our sympathy. And unlike, say, gangster movies like The Godfather, where the protagonists are understood to be villains and the interesting thing is to watch how they descend into villainy despite being family men and having some redeeming qualities, con men don’t tend to feel so much like antiheroes. They feel like heroes. They win like heroes, right? Isn’t it kind of the same thrill to watch the con man’s scheme come to fruition as it is watching the hero of a sports movie win after training so hard? But con men shouldn’t be upheld as heroes. They are criminals, after all. So how to reconcile this is one of the big challenges of this type of movie.
I remember watching Matchstick Men several years ago and thinking about this issue then. (I’ll spoil the ending here since that movie wasn’t so great that you might care too much at this point). Matchstick Men’s method of dealing with this concern was to have the main character ultimately get conned himself and thus receive his comeuppance, which I think then makes it a bit more palatable that we’ve been enjoying his swindles earlier on. The Sting has a different way of dealing with this problem, however, and that is to have the victim of the big con be a worse villain than our heroes. If the guy getting swindled deserves to get swindled, then we have no real moral objection to our heroes being criminals too.
Anyway, the big con is complex, and there are twists and turns along the way. Paul Newman and Robert Redford are so likable that even if they were swindling little old ladies out of their retirement money, we’d probably still want to root for them. There’s humor and action and even some touching moments. Ultimately, it’s just a straight out fun movie. And if you’re ever feeling down and want to be distracted for a couple of hours with old fashioned, well put together entertainment, you could do a lot worse than The Sting.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
How to Train Your Dragon
How to Train Your Dragon features a very standard plot for a children’s movie. There’s the kid who doesn’t really fit in with everybody else but believes that maybe he has a bigger purpose, and then, sure enough, he does and saves the day! In this case, the misfit kid is a Viking who is skinny and weak and doesn’t have the same abilities as all his fellow villagers when it comes to fighting off hordes of invading dragons. But when he befriends a dragon, he learns that dragons aren’t so bad after all, and he and his new pal teach everybody a valuable lesson.
On a whole, this movie was enjoyable, but it also left me somehow disappointed. Maybe the reason for that is simply that I’ve come to expect a lot of animated movies in recent years. Pixar keeps putting out amazing films, and though I haven’t seen the latest Shrek, those are all a ton of fun too. But I suppose as the animation gets better or easier to do or whatever, as more studios are putting out CGI animated movies anyway, the overall quality goes down a little bit. Some of them are thrown together too quickly. I can’t really accuse How to Train Your Dragon of being tossed together without care because it is well made. The dragons are cool, there are many funny parts, but still . . .
Another one that I was a little disappointed in was Despicable Me. It had plenty of funny parts and was cute overall, but I just somehow expected more of it. And the same was true of How to Train Your Dragon. I’d basically recommend it. If I had kids, I’m sure I’d buy the DVD and watch it with them regularly. And, really, I have no actual complaints about it other than just a vague wish that it was a little better than it is.
Maybe once again it comes down to expectations. When I watched Predators, I was expecting a lame sci fi action flick, and I got exactly what I expected, so I enjoyed it. With How to Train Your Dragon, I had heard that it was fantastic, and I expected a movie comparable to the stuff that Pixar is producing, but that isn’t quite what I got. Had I expected a lame, cheap, poorly written animated movie, I probably would have been pleasantly surprised and would highly recommend it to everybody. It’s strange how much difference expectations make.
On a whole, this movie was enjoyable, but it also left me somehow disappointed. Maybe the reason for that is simply that I’ve come to expect a lot of animated movies in recent years. Pixar keeps putting out amazing films, and though I haven’t seen the latest Shrek, those are all a ton of fun too. But I suppose as the animation gets better or easier to do or whatever, as more studios are putting out CGI animated movies anyway, the overall quality goes down a little bit. Some of them are thrown together too quickly. I can’t really accuse How to Train Your Dragon of being tossed together without care because it is well made. The dragons are cool, there are many funny parts, but still . . .
Another one that I was a little disappointed in was Despicable Me. It had plenty of funny parts and was cute overall, but I just somehow expected more of it. And the same was true of How to Train Your Dragon. I’d basically recommend it. If I had kids, I’m sure I’d buy the DVD and watch it with them regularly. And, really, I have no actual complaints about it other than just a vague wish that it was a little better than it is.
Maybe once again it comes down to expectations. When I watched Predators, I was expecting a lame sci fi action flick, and I got exactly what I expected, so I enjoyed it. With How to Train Your Dragon, I had heard that it was fantastic, and I expected a movie comparable to the stuff that Pixar is producing, but that isn’t quite what I got. Had I expected a lame, cheap, poorly written animated movie, I probably would have been pleasantly surprised and would highly recommend it to everybody. It’s strange how much difference expectations make.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Cop Out, The Other Guys, Predators, Star Trek
I’ve been sick the past couple of days. It was good timing to get sick since my semester is over, so I don’t have any papers to grade or classes to plan right now. In fact, there is no place that I have to be for about three weeks. So I’m glad I got sick this weekend instead of last weekend when I had dozens of final papers to grade. I wasn’t so sick, however, that I could not have done that work if I needed to. It was the type of stomach bug that is no fun, leaving me queasy and tired but no worse than that. The kind of sickness that you can plow through and try to ignore, but if you have the luxury of just taking time off, it’s better to take the time. And I was feeling just ill enough to not even want to do anything as active as reading. So I lay in bed and watched movies.
I wasn’t in the mood for anything serious that I’d have to pay a lot of attention to, so instead I glanced at some On Demand and Netflix options and chose some low-brow flicks that were exactly what I was in the mood for in that state: Cop Out, Predators, The Other Guys, and Star Trek.
Cop Out is an action comedy that has a fair numbers of laughs, thanks primarily to Tracy Morgan, but is also an actual buddy cop action movie with lots of shooting guns and such. My brother watched it recently (also while feeling bad), and recommended it, saying it was a lot like the eighties movies Fletch and Beverly Hills Cop. I think that’s a fair assessment. In general, it was decent, though not one I’d want to watch a second time. I have a few quick comments. One, it’s directed by, but not written by, Kevin Smith, which seems odd since Smith has a lot of funny dialogue in his scripts but is a fairly mediocre director. Two, Tracy Morgan is hilarious and makes the movie worth watching, which I don’t think it would otherwise be. Finally, I was intrigued, but not pulled into the story, by the major event that sets the action in place: Bruce Willis’s character’s daughter is getting married and wants a dream wedding. He can’t afford to pay the $48,000 price tag and doesn’t want to be shown up by the rich new husband of his ex-wife. So his desire to find a way to pay for the wedding sets ups the action for the rest of the movie. I was really annoyed by this. For one thing, $48,000 is ridiculous to pay for a wedding, especially if you can’t easily afford it. I wanted the character to acknowledge how stupid that was rather than do whatever it takes to make it happen. So the whole set up seemed to me to be a non-issue. I wasn’t really invested in whether he would be able to get the money because his reason for wanting the money was idiotic. Furthermore, his stupid macho pride in wanting to do it himself rather than accept the help of his ex-wife’s new husband was a real turn off for me. That kind of pride is a flaw that, were this a tragedy, should lead to the character’s downfall; but since this was a comedy, I was supposed to like the guy, which I didn’t. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but this big event that I think was supposed to make me sympathize with the character really had the opposite effect for me.
The Other Guys, like Cop Out is a buddy cop action comedy. However, instead of being on that line between traditional cop movie and comedy, this is firmly over the edge in dumb comedy territory (it stars Will Ferrell and is directed by Adam McKay, so it’s what you’d expect from them), and it made me laugh many, many times. Again, it’s the kind of movie I especially like to watch when I’m not feeling well, so it did the trick for me.
Predators also was exactly what I expected it to be. I saw the ads when it came out last year and thought it might be brainless fun, and it was. If you thought from the ads you might like it, then you probably will like it. If you thought it looked stupid, you’ll probably think it’s stupid. I mean, frankly, it is stupid. But it’s got badass aliens hunting humans, so what do you expect?
Star Trek, once again, was what I expected it to be. I had heard that this was much better than anyone expected from a new Star Trek movie, and I suppose I can see what people were saying, though I didn’t feel all that strongly about it. I guess the old Star Trek movies, and the show especially, were really cheesy, and this tones down the cheese quite a bit, but it’s still just Star Trek. There’s nothing amazing or especially thought provoking about it, and it even acknowledges the cheese factor and has fun with some tropes of the Star Trek world. For instance, Kirk is remembered for bedding green alien women, so he does that in the movie. There’s the stereotype of the one random guy in the red shirt who is sent down to a planet with the main characters and who you know is going to get killed, so in the movie there’s a sequence where three characters go on a mission, two are principles and one is a random guy who, sure enough, is wearing red and doesn’t have long to live.
My verdict: big blockbuster action movies and dumb comedies are particularly enjoyable when I’m in the mood to just turn off my brain or when my brain is running at half speed due to illness or exhaustion. So these four movies were a pretty good way to relax and distract myself from my grumbling stomach awhile.
I wasn’t in the mood for anything serious that I’d have to pay a lot of attention to, so instead I glanced at some On Demand and Netflix options and chose some low-brow flicks that were exactly what I was in the mood for in that state: Cop Out, Predators, The Other Guys, and Star Trek.
Cop Out is an action comedy that has a fair numbers of laughs, thanks primarily to Tracy Morgan, but is also an actual buddy cop action movie with lots of shooting guns and such. My brother watched it recently (also while feeling bad), and recommended it, saying it was a lot like the eighties movies Fletch and Beverly Hills Cop. I think that’s a fair assessment. In general, it was decent, though not one I’d want to watch a second time. I have a few quick comments. One, it’s directed by, but not written by, Kevin Smith, which seems odd since Smith has a lot of funny dialogue in his scripts but is a fairly mediocre director. Two, Tracy Morgan is hilarious and makes the movie worth watching, which I don’t think it would otherwise be. Finally, I was intrigued, but not pulled into the story, by the major event that sets the action in place: Bruce Willis’s character’s daughter is getting married and wants a dream wedding. He can’t afford to pay the $48,000 price tag and doesn’t want to be shown up by the rich new husband of his ex-wife. So his desire to find a way to pay for the wedding sets ups the action for the rest of the movie. I was really annoyed by this. For one thing, $48,000 is ridiculous to pay for a wedding, especially if you can’t easily afford it. I wanted the character to acknowledge how stupid that was rather than do whatever it takes to make it happen. So the whole set up seemed to me to be a non-issue. I wasn’t really invested in whether he would be able to get the money because his reason for wanting the money was idiotic. Furthermore, his stupid macho pride in wanting to do it himself rather than accept the help of his ex-wife’s new husband was a real turn off for me. That kind of pride is a flaw that, were this a tragedy, should lead to the character’s downfall; but since this was a comedy, I was supposed to like the guy, which I didn’t. Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but this big event that I think was supposed to make me sympathize with the character really had the opposite effect for me.
The Other Guys, like Cop Out is a buddy cop action comedy. However, instead of being on that line between traditional cop movie and comedy, this is firmly over the edge in dumb comedy territory (it stars Will Ferrell and is directed by Adam McKay, so it’s what you’d expect from them), and it made me laugh many, many times. Again, it’s the kind of movie I especially like to watch when I’m not feeling well, so it did the trick for me.
Predators also was exactly what I expected it to be. I saw the ads when it came out last year and thought it might be brainless fun, and it was. If you thought from the ads you might like it, then you probably will like it. If you thought it looked stupid, you’ll probably think it’s stupid. I mean, frankly, it is stupid. But it’s got badass aliens hunting humans, so what do you expect?
Star Trek, once again, was what I expected it to be. I had heard that this was much better than anyone expected from a new Star Trek movie, and I suppose I can see what people were saying, though I didn’t feel all that strongly about it. I guess the old Star Trek movies, and the show especially, were really cheesy, and this tones down the cheese quite a bit, but it’s still just Star Trek. There’s nothing amazing or especially thought provoking about it, and it even acknowledges the cheese factor and has fun with some tropes of the Star Trek world. For instance, Kirk is remembered for bedding green alien women, so he does that in the movie. There’s the stereotype of the one random guy in the red shirt who is sent down to a planet with the main characters and who you know is going to get killed, so in the movie there’s a sequence where three characters go on a mission, two are principles and one is a random guy who, sure enough, is wearing red and doesn’t have long to live.
My verdict: big blockbuster action movies and dumb comedies are particularly enjoyable when I’m in the mood to just turn off my brain or when my brain is running at half speed due to illness or exhaustion. So these four movies were a pretty good way to relax and distract myself from my grumbling stomach awhile.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Source Code
I just saw Source Code at a second run theater. I don’t remember hearing a whole lot about it when it was released several weeks ago. I vaguely remember seeing a trailer at some point, a friend of mine mentioned on Facebook that he liked it, and a podcast I listen to referred to it as interesting. It wasn’t one that I was especially drawn to from the trailer, but because I heard it was interesting, I glanced at some reviews (which were generally fairly positive) and figured it would be worth checking out at some point, maybe on cable down the road. But then I noticed it was playing at a second run theater, and since my semester just finished and I’m in the mood to just relax a bit as summer break begins, I decided to see it.
I think the reason that it didn’t get as much buzz as some other recent movies is that it’s one of those science fiction movies where the premise is hard to explain well in a trailer; furthermore, the premise doesn’t really make a lot of sense. However, if you just go with it, it’s really a good time. Here’s the situation. There’s a bomb on a train (no this isn’t a new sequel to Speed). The train has already blown up. But our hero wakes up on the train in another man’s body eight minutes before the explosion. He’s being sent back in time to try to discover who the mad bomber is so he can prevent a second bomb from destroying the city of Chicago. I know: What? But there’s an explanation for how the military scientists can send somebody back in time into somebody else’s body, but only for eight minutes at a time: something called source code. How does source code work? Blah, blah, blah. Quantum physics. Blah, blah, blah.
You can see why it was tough to make an appealing trailer from this material. And, seriously, it sounds pretty ridiculous. But this movie is thrilling. It reminded me of several other movies. There’s a pinch of Speed (but in a good way), a dash of Memento (because the movie begins in the middle of things with a guy waking up not knowing where he is or how he got there or even who he is), a heap of Groundhog Day (as he relives the same events, only eight minutes at a time instead of a full day at a time), and even Inception (since there’s the weird world of “source code” and the sort of real world after the explosion and they keep going back and forth between the two). And all of those elements make for a fun, engaging movie.
It isn’t just thrills, however. Yes, there’s the mystery of trying to find the bomber and the mystery of trying to figure out what the hell is even going on, but there’s also a fair amount of character development. And I think the performances of the main actors are really what make this movie work so well. Jake Gyllenhaal, in particular, gives this oddball premise a sense of weight. As I watch the events unfold, I’m far more concerned with how he feels than with whether or not he can prevent a nuclear bomb from destroying millions of innocent folks. And by the end of the movie, I had actually run the gamut of reactions from sitting up in my seat with excitement to laughing to pondering the notion of multiple parallel universes to even tearing up with emotion.
The one caution I’ll give here is that this might be the kind of movie that is best to go in without big expectations. I went in thinking, “I’ve heard it’s interesting. I don’t exactly know what the whole story is, but I’ll give it a try.” And I was really surprised by how enjoyable it was. I wonder, though, if I would have liked it quite so much if I had expected it to be amazing. Often expectations make a big difference. The movie that everyone raves about turns out to be good but also disappointing. So to prevent you from having that experience, I’ll add a few final thoughts: the premise is ridiculous, it does bog down a little in the middle when he’s going back through the same eight minutes over and over again, and the end takes maybe longer than necessary to wind down. See? It’s not that amazing. So go in thinking it’ll maybe be a decent way to distract yourself for a couple of hours, and you might be surprised how good it is.
I think the reason that it didn’t get as much buzz as some other recent movies is that it’s one of those science fiction movies where the premise is hard to explain well in a trailer; furthermore, the premise doesn’t really make a lot of sense. However, if you just go with it, it’s really a good time. Here’s the situation. There’s a bomb on a train (no this isn’t a new sequel to Speed). The train has already blown up. But our hero wakes up on the train in another man’s body eight minutes before the explosion. He’s being sent back in time to try to discover who the mad bomber is so he can prevent a second bomb from destroying the city of Chicago. I know: What? But there’s an explanation for how the military scientists can send somebody back in time into somebody else’s body, but only for eight minutes at a time: something called source code. How does source code work? Blah, blah, blah. Quantum physics. Blah, blah, blah.
You can see why it was tough to make an appealing trailer from this material. And, seriously, it sounds pretty ridiculous. But this movie is thrilling. It reminded me of several other movies. There’s a pinch of Speed (but in a good way), a dash of Memento (because the movie begins in the middle of things with a guy waking up not knowing where he is or how he got there or even who he is), a heap of Groundhog Day (as he relives the same events, only eight minutes at a time instead of a full day at a time), and even Inception (since there’s the weird world of “source code” and the sort of real world after the explosion and they keep going back and forth between the two). And all of those elements make for a fun, engaging movie.
It isn’t just thrills, however. Yes, there’s the mystery of trying to find the bomber and the mystery of trying to figure out what the hell is even going on, but there’s also a fair amount of character development. And I think the performances of the main actors are really what make this movie work so well. Jake Gyllenhaal, in particular, gives this oddball premise a sense of weight. As I watch the events unfold, I’m far more concerned with how he feels than with whether or not he can prevent a nuclear bomb from destroying millions of innocent folks. And by the end of the movie, I had actually run the gamut of reactions from sitting up in my seat with excitement to laughing to pondering the notion of multiple parallel universes to even tearing up with emotion.
The one caution I’ll give here is that this might be the kind of movie that is best to go in without big expectations. I went in thinking, “I’ve heard it’s interesting. I don’t exactly know what the whole story is, but I’ll give it a try.” And I was really surprised by how enjoyable it was. I wonder, though, if I would have liked it quite so much if I had expected it to be amazing. Often expectations make a big difference. The movie that everyone raves about turns out to be good but also disappointing. So to prevent you from having that experience, I’ll add a few final thoughts: the premise is ridiculous, it does bog down a little in the middle when he’s going back through the same eight minutes over and over again, and the end takes maybe longer than necessary to wind down. See? It’s not that amazing. So go in thinking it’ll maybe be a decent way to distract yourself for a couple of hours, and you might be surprised how good it is.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Thor
It was a very Norse weekend for me. On Saturday I went to see a broadcast of Die Walküre as part of the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series. Then on Sunday I went to Thor. I won’t write too much about Die Walküre because even though I saw it at a movie theater, it wasn’t really a movie, and this blog is devoted to movies. I’ll let it suffice to write that I enjoyed it, I left with “Flight of the Valkyries” stuck in my head, and that it (along with Thor) inspired me to want to learn more about Norse mythology.
I know a little bit about Norse mythology, but just the generic stuff—that Thor is the god of thunder, Odin is the big chief god, Valhalla is where heroes go when they die, and so on. My interest in Wagner’s Ring Cycle in recent years has given me a bit more knowledge, but I’m not sure what is classic Norse mythology and what Wagner changed around for his own purposes. But I’m not particularly familiar with the Marvel comics character Thor. My brother, Nate, is a Marvel fan, and he told me that Thor is to Marvel comics what Superman is to DC, in that he is otherworldly with super strength and can basically fly and so forth. So I went to see Thor without many particular expectations beyond just hoping to see a fun comic book movie. I did have fun at the movie, but somehow, despite what I thought were my lack of expectations, it wasn’t what I expected.
I have seen a lot of comic book superhero movies over the years, and I generally enjoy them. I suppose that, without giving it too much conscious thought, I have come to expect certain traits from the first movie in a superhero series. I’ll meet the hero, find out what type of powers he has, where he came from, how he became a hero, etc. Sometimes it starts off with the hero as a child and leads up to the point where he becomes a hero (as in the original Superman movie), or it might present the character before getting powers (as in Spider-Man), or maybe just start with the hero already doing his work (as in the first Tim Burton Batman). But at some point, there will be a double identity and conflict between the desire to be a normal person and a heroic super human. But Thor is different. It begins much like Superman. We’re in a different world, there’s the backstory of a father and son. Instead of Marlon Brando as Jor-El, we have Anthony Hopkins as Odin, but still, I can see where this is going. But then the movie doesn’t go there. One of the big differences is simply that Thor has no secret identity. When he arrives on Earth, he’s just Thor. And the fun isn’t in him dressing up like a hero, it’s in him dressing down like a regular guy and trying to figure out how to relate to his new surroundings.
Another big difference is in the major conflict. Again, I expect from past superhero movies that there will be one major villain, a Lex Luthor or Green Goblin or Joker. But the villain in Thor emerges much more slowly and subtly than in many other superhero stories. The villain in this movie is probably the most fully fleshed out, complexly motivated character of the lot. This contrasts quite a bit with our hero; even though there is an arc to Thor’s story, during which he achieves some growth as a character, it’s clear from early on what that growth will be, so we aren’t surprised when it happens. But it’s not clear from the beginning what exactly the villain’s arc will be or even whether the character we suspect will be the villain will eventually emerge to be the clear villain.
There are obligatory scenes of fighting that feel comparable to other comic book movies, and there are some deliberate tie-ins with other Marvel movies and setting up next year’s Avengers movie; but despite all of this, it still didn’t exactly feel like a superhero movie to me. I suppose that if I hadn’t known it was based on a comic book, I might have just thought it was an intriguing original idea to take a mythic god and put him into our modern world, and I don’t know if I ever would have thought of the term superhero at all. And that’s kind of refreshing.
There have been a few movies recently that have taken the superhero genre and played with it. Watchmen, Kick-Ass, and Super (which I haven’t seen yet but want to) all toy with the premise of real people deciding to become superheroes. But here’s sort of the opposite approach. Thor is a super human, literally a god. But for most of the movie, he isn’t dressed in a cape and flying around catching bad guys. He’s just a fish out of water, walking around, trying to get his bearings. In a weird way, maybe more than Superman, Thor reminded me of Crocodile Dundee.
I know a little bit about Norse mythology, but just the generic stuff—that Thor is the god of thunder, Odin is the big chief god, Valhalla is where heroes go when they die, and so on. My interest in Wagner’s Ring Cycle in recent years has given me a bit more knowledge, but I’m not sure what is classic Norse mythology and what Wagner changed around for his own purposes. But I’m not particularly familiar with the Marvel comics character Thor. My brother, Nate, is a Marvel fan, and he told me that Thor is to Marvel comics what Superman is to DC, in that he is otherworldly with super strength and can basically fly and so forth. So I went to see Thor without many particular expectations beyond just hoping to see a fun comic book movie. I did have fun at the movie, but somehow, despite what I thought were my lack of expectations, it wasn’t what I expected.
I have seen a lot of comic book superhero movies over the years, and I generally enjoy them. I suppose that, without giving it too much conscious thought, I have come to expect certain traits from the first movie in a superhero series. I’ll meet the hero, find out what type of powers he has, where he came from, how he became a hero, etc. Sometimes it starts off with the hero as a child and leads up to the point where he becomes a hero (as in the original Superman movie), or it might present the character before getting powers (as in Spider-Man), or maybe just start with the hero already doing his work (as in the first Tim Burton Batman). But at some point, there will be a double identity and conflict between the desire to be a normal person and a heroic super human. But Thor is different. It begins much like Superman. We’re in a different world, there’s the backstory of a father and son. Instead of Marlon Brando as Jor-El, we have Anthony Hopkins as Odin, but still, I can see where this is going. But then the movie doesn’t go there. One of the big differences is simply that Thor has no secret identity. When he arrives on Earth, he’s just Thor. And the fun isn’t in him dressing up like a hero, it’s in him dressing down like a regular guy and trying to figure out how to relate to his new surroundings.
Another big difference is in the major conflict. Again, I expect from past superhero movies that there will be one major villain, a Lex Luthor or Green Goblin or Joker. But the villain in Thor emerges much more slowly and subtly than in many other superhero stories. The villain in this movie is probably the most fully fleshed out, complexly motivated character of the lot. This contrasts quite a bit with our hero; even though there is an arc to Thor’s story, during which he achieves some growth as a character, it’s clear from early on what that growth will be, so we aren’t surprised when it happens. But it’s not clear from the beginning what exactly the villain’s arc will be or even whether the character we suspect will be the villain will eventually emerge to be the clear villain.
There are obligatory scenes of fighting that feel comparable to other comic book movies, and there are some deliberate tie-ins with other Marvel movies and setting up next year’s Avengers movie; but despite all of this, it still didn’t exactly feel like a superhero movie to me. I suppose that if I hadn’t known it was based on a comic book, I might have just thought it was an intriguing original idea to take a mythic god and put him into our modern world, and I don’t know if I ever would have thought of the term superhero at all. And that’s kind of refreshing.
There have been a few movies recently that have taken the superhero genre and played with it. Watchmen, Kick-Ass, and Super (which I haven’t seen yet but want to) all toy with the premise of real people deciding to become superheroes. But here’s sort of the opposite approach. Thor is a super human, literally a god. But for most of the movie, he isn’t dressed in a cape and flying around catching bad guys. He’s just a fish out of water, walking around, trying to get his bearings. In a weird way, maybe more than Superman, Thor reminded me of Crocodile Dundee.
Saturday, May 14, 2011
Drag Me to Hell
I just watched Drag Me to Hell last night. I saw it originally at the theater when it came out but hadn’t seen it since. I’ve been in the mood to watch it recently because I’ve been joking with my girlfriend, Tiffany, that she’s suffering under a gypsy curse since she has the worst luck of anybody I know; most recently, she’s had two car accidents in the past few months, both ending with her car totaled (yes, that includes the car she bought to replace the first totaled car). After the second accident, I asked if she had pissed off some old gypsy woman. Then a Blockbuster nearby was closing down, so I stocked up on a few clearance DVDs, including Drag Me to Hell. Yesterday was Friday the 13th, so my sister-in-law, Kelly, suggested watching a horror movie, so we all (Tiffany, Kelly, me, and my brother, Nate) gathered to watch it.
As I mentioned, I had seen the movie before at the theater and remembered liking it, but I had forgotten how good it really is. I am a fan of the director Sam Raimi. I’ve seen nearly all his movies (I did a quick search on imdb.com, and I think the only feature film he’s directed that I haven’t seen is The Quick and the Dead, which I really should see). Not all Raimi’s films are great, but they range from decent enough (Darkman) to hilarious and silly (Army of Darkness) to actually far better than I might have predicted (A Simple Plan), considering Raimi is the guy who directed Bruce Campbell fighting against his own possessed hand. After Raimi made the three Spider-Man movies, which I liked pretty well but wasn’t as thrilled with as some other superhero movies like the Christopher Nolan Batmans (Batmen?), I wondered if Raimi would stick to bigger budget action movies, but then he returned to a movie that had a very similar feeling to the Evil Dead movies that made me a Raimi fan in the first place.
Somehow, Drag Me to Hell manages to feel fresh and original while simultaneously feeling like a much older movie. Maybe it feels older to me just because it reminds me of Rami’s earlier work, or maybe it’s just that the gypsy curse plot hardly feels unique. But once the premise has been established, there’s a lot of fun as the curse develops. There are laugh out loud disgusting moments, including the old gypsy woman’s slobbery biting attack, vomiting maggots, and perhaps the worst nosebleed in cinema history. If such splatstick (a term I believe coined by Raimi about his approach to horror back in the Evil Dead days) doesn’t appeal to you, then this certainly isn’t your kind of movie. But if it does, if you like the idea of horror movies but also recognize that most of them are terrible, then this movie is probably the type you’ll enjoy.
Taking itself too seriously might be the worst trait a horror movie can have, and Drag Me to Hell is not guilty of this offense. Certainly horror can have social messages, as in Dawn of the Dead; in fact, I think the science fiction genre, which often overlaps with horror, can be a great medium for social commentary. But the filmmakers need to accept that the genre is full of clichés, that the premises are ridiculous, and that the fun isn’t really in being scared (after all, unless you’re a little kid, you probably never get genuinely scared at horror movies), the fun is in playing with the elements of the genre. And this movie has a lot of fun. Horror movies are full of blood? OK, then how about a bloody nose that sprays all over the room? Horror movies feature creepy dead bodies? Then how about the heroine accidentally knocking over a body at a funeral and having the rigor mortised fingers clutch at the heroine’s hair, ripping out a chunk?
The best horror movies do play on real fears, even simple fears like darkness, death, and strangers, and Drag Me to Hell does that. But the best horror movies also know that since the tongue probably won’t be genuinely screaming, a good place for it would be in the cheek.
As I mentioned, I had seen the movie before at the theater and remembered liking it, but I had forgotten how good it really is. I am a fan of the director Sam Raimi. I’ve seen nearly all his movies (I did a quick search on imdb.com, and I think the only feature film he’s directed that I haven’t seen is The Quick and the Dead, which I really should see). Not all Raimi’s films are great, but they range from decent enough (Darkman) to hilarious and silly (Army of Darkness) to actually far better than I might have predicted (A Simple Plan), considering Raimi is the guy who directed Bruce Campbell fighting against his own possessed hand. After Raimi made the three Spider-Man movies, which I liked pretty well but wasn’t as thrilled with as some other superhero movies like the Christopher Nolan Batmans (Batmen?), I wondered if Raimi would stick to bigger budget action movies, but then he returned to a movie that had a very similar feeling to the Evil Dead movies that made me a Raimi fan in the first place.
Somehow, Drag Me to Hell manages to feel fresh and original while simultaneously feeling like a much older movie. Maybe it feels older to me just because it reminds me of Rami’s earlier work, or maybe it’s just that the gypsy curse plot hardly feels unique. But once the premise has been established, there’s a lot of fun as the curse develops. There are laugh out loud disgusting moments, including the old gypsy woman’s slobbery biting attack, vomiting maggots, and perhaps the worst nosebleed in cinema history. If such splatstick (a term I believe coined by Raimi about his approach to horror back in the Evil Dead days) doesn’t appeal to you, then this certainly isn’t your kind of movie. But if it does, if you like the idea of horror movies but also recognize that most of them are terrible, then this movie is probably the type you’ll enjoy.
Taking itself too seriously might be the worst trait a horror movie can have, and Drag Me to Hell is not guilty of this offense. Certainly horror can have social messages, as in Dawn of the Dead; in fact, I think the science fiction genre, which often overlaps with horror, can be a great medium for social commentary. But the filmmakers need to accept that the genre is full of clichés, that the premises are ridiculous, and that the fun isn’t really in being scared (after all, unless you’re a little kid, you probably never get genuinely scared at horror movies), the fun is in playing with the elements of the genre. And this movie has a lot of fun. Horror movies are full of blood? OK, then how about a bloody nose that sprays all over the room? Horror movies feature creepy dead bodies? Then how about the heroine accidentally knocking over a body at a funeral and having the rigor mortised fingers clutch at the heroine’s hair, ripping out a chunk?
The best horror movies do play on real fears, even simple fears like darkness, death, and strangers, and Drag Me to Hell does that. But the best horror movies also know that since the tongue probably won’t be genuinely screaming, a good place for it would be in the cheek.
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