Ghost Town

Forget that the story of Ghost Town is an overly-familiar Scrooge tale about a grumpy man who learns to love again with the help of a few ghosts or that the film itself often feels like a mawkish, mid-nineties romantic comedy following in the (then) successful wake of Nora Ephron films. Focus, instead, on what elevates the film from a standard but well-executed programmer to a howlingly funny film: Ricky Gervais. Viewers of the British version of The Office or Extras know that Gervais is a master at spinning comedic gold by playing sad little men, and his work in Ghost Town only further confirms this. He imbues the curmudegonly stuff with an unrelenting sweetness that belies the bruised, aching heart at the core of the character, but he also plays the lovey-dovey stuff with a cynical, aware edge. This, by itself is valuable, but doesn't even get into how delightfully, devillishly funny he is. His use of the phrase "fait accompli" when discussing the results of a laxative would, by itself, justify the cost of admission.

Gervais plays a dentist who abhors the company of others, preferring the tidiness and quiet of a secluded life. He goes in for a colonoscopy and dies for seven minutes during the procedure. After being brought back to life, he finds that he's able to see and hear the ghosts of others who have passed on, and these apparations begin to pester him to help take care of their unfinished business. He's disgusted, of course, that he has a new cadre of souls to be annoyed by, and finds that he can't isolate himself from these desperate, needy creatures as easily as he can with the living. The most persistent of these spirits is a smooth-talking, tuxedoed ghost played by Greg Kinnear. Kinnear's distrustful and jealous of his widow's new fiancee (the fiancee is a humorless bore, played admirably by Billy Campbell), and wants Gervais to break up the relationship before she is hurt again.

Things complicate when Gervais lays eyes on the woman, played by Tea Leoni. He's immediately smitten and decides the best way to break up her new relationship is to romance her himself. This would smack of convenient or even lazy plotting, but for the performances of Leoni and Gervais. Leoni, for instance, plays her character as a bit of a misfit, a morbid, goofy, and even nerdy woman. She's delivering a lecture on mummies, and the unbridled passion and obsession she evinces makes her seem like an immediate good match for the cloistered, fussy Gervais. This holds true throughout--the two have a remarkable amount of chemistry and this renders Gervais's awkward, uncomfortable attempts to woo her cute rather than spooky and her return on his affections relatable rather than perplexing.

The film was directed by David Koepp who's a Hollywood screenwriter of some note (he's credited on such little films as Spiderman, Jurassic Park, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), and his past directorial efforts have been competent, if not exactly inspiring (Stir of Echoes and The Trigger Effect being the best of the lot). Here he's working in the same realm--a hundred little choices in this film add up to it feeling smart and sturdy for what it is, even if the film winds up feeling a little insignificant. The most inspired choice Koepp makes, though, is in giving Gervais plenty of space to do his schtick. Ivan Reitman and Harold Ramis found great success by giving Bill Murray this kind of room to play in films like Ghostbusters, Groundhog Day, and even lesser vehicles like Meatballs or Stripes. Koepp's generosity with Gervais's performance is the correct approach--Gervias should be (and hopefully will be) as universally celebrated for his comedic gifts as Murray is.

While the film is too cutesy and too sentimental at times, I, and the audience I saw it with, were roaring with laughter for very long stretches. The woman next to me was doubled over and gasping for air and huge swaths of dialogue went unheard due to the revelry. This is not necessarily a film for the ages, but the comedy is sweet and inviting, hilarious and honest. Mainstream comedic films have become increasingly brash and pointed over the past few years, and even something as funny as Tropic Thunder can be quite an assault on the senses. It's a nice feeling to watch something like Ghost Town, which has something of the air of a classic comedy from the 30s. It's far from squeaky clean, but it's nevertheless decent at its core. By laughing you feel a little bit better about yourself and the world around you.

Would be a good double feature with: Groundhog Day

Get Smart

Dear Hollywood types,

I really don’t care if you feel the need to labor over the beginnings of Batman, Spiderman, Superman, Zorro, and all manner of superheroes, turning them into mournful, lonely souls whose isolation and despair lead them to carry out acts of vigilante justice. I’m cool with that. But could you, at least as a favor to those of us who enjoy a good chuckle here and there, refrain from burdening our iconic comedy characters with these troubles? Get Smart, the television show upon which this recent Steve Carell vehicle is based, was never, like, great or anything, but it was, for the most part, a consistently funny little cartoon of a show whose Maxwell Smart was a bumbler due as much to his indifference as his incompetence. He was cocksure, steady, and consistent in the face of all manner of troubles, and it was these qualities that led to some genuinely funny moments. In this film version, you’ve, for reasons I can only guess at, saddled Maxwell Smart with unrequited desires, a desperate longing to become a field agent within the spy agency known as Control, and turned him into a bookish analyst who is, we’re told, out of his depth in the field. So, as this wimpy, nerdy version of Maxwell Smart proves himself worthy of Field Agent status through the plot of this film, you’ve given us, yet again, a fucking origin story.

Now that you’ve shown us where Maxwell Smart comes from, what’s up next, guys? Do we get to suffer through 80 minutes of Groucho Marx’s father abandoning him at an early age, leading him to develop a caustic wit as a defense mechanism against a harsh world that clearly doesn’t want him? How about a Naked Gun prequel that details the young Frank Drebin’s ascent through a hilariously hellish Police Academy (Steve Guttenberg could play the tough, but fair instructor who passes the young Drebin because, while he’s stupid, he’s sure got a lot of heart!)? Or perhaps we get to see a jilted young woman wailing at the altar while her father holds her and says, “I love you, Lucy.” I heartily encourage you all to grow a pair. Plant your fucking feet. Please stop telling us how things came to be, and start telling us what happens after.

I didn’t hate this movie version of Get Smart, though it was all over the place. It had a funny bit here or there (most of them came from the original show, but I won’t blame you for sticking with good material instead of coming up with good, new stuff. That’s hard!) The action climax of this film was genuinely involving. It was well-done, the stakes made sense, and it had an exciting, even funny, kinetic energy that propelled it forward to a logical, again, funny, conclusion (I will note that it was way too loud; the blaring of the obnoxious score nearly ruined it). I really enjoyed Anne Hathaway’s performance. I thought she showed very well-attuned comic timing in her role as the straight woman to Smart’s bumbling and that she and Steve Carell had a very nice rapport. This, no doubt, led to my finding the climax being as involving as it was, despite the fact that, for most of the film, I was disappointed that the jokes were so stale and (since the comedy wasn’t working) the narrative was so pat. Good job guys!

But, I mean, come on. We’re here for the yuk-yuks, and most of your jokes seem like bits that didn’t make the cut from either Austin Powers or The Naked Gun movies. The Get Smart television show has a pretty clear ancestral relationship to both of these franchises, so setting the bar as low as you do and branding it with the legacy of motherfucking Buck Henry feels, not only pathetic, but somewhat malevolent. There’s a moment where Terrence Stamp as the ultra bad guy, tries to blackmail the United States for 200 billion dollars and, despite the fact that the moment is played entirely straight, you could pretty much feel everyone in the theater sharing a chuckle about Dr. Evil’s one millllllion dollars. Did you not care? Are you just tone-deaf? And what’s with the fact that your movie had absolutely zero target for satire? You weren’t lampooning anything, and, in fact, had some weird, almost didactic moments kind-of shoveled in there about understanding that our enemies are human and that being the key to success in war or something. But you didn’t think to, like, ever show the opposite view and how it’s doomed to (maybe, fingers-crossed, if you could be bothered, hilarious) failure? And, forgive me if I'm overstepping here, but why on Earth would you seriously try to play any of this film straight?

Look, I get it. We’re living in the Judd Apatow universe now, the one where it says that comedies require some underlying dramatic tension and honest character work. And this is something I, generally, agree with. There should be, at the very least, a certain amount of "dramatic relief" to the comedies you’re creating. And I’ll give you credit that you didn’t show a teary-eyed Maxwell Smart realizing what a boob he’d been and vowing to change or grow up or whatever, since it’s common for these modern comedies to mistake such unbearable treacle for conflict and resolution. But I also firmly believe that the drama should be absolutely entwined with the comedy you’re making. If you’re working in a two dimensional space, as the character of Maxwell Smart most certainly is, your drama must exist in that same space. Otherwise, you’ve made the mistake of trying to turn a cartoon into a real boy. I submit that you leave that nonsense to the Blue Fairy, and, next time, take aim at something--anything!--before you fire.

Yours,
David Wester

p.s. YOU MISSED IT BY SOOOO MUCH! AH HAHAHAHAHAHA HA HA HA HA!

Day 75: Gappa

Not too long ago, geologically speaking, there were sloths as big as elephants and wee little peoples that lived on an island with similarly wee elephants and huge fucking lizards (it seems as if Ray Harryhausen must have been consulted about this). All of that's changed now, but thankfully, the Japanese have refused to let the emotion tied to such overwhelmingly large God-like animals or prehistoric curiosities die. Though Gappa is eminently disposable, a rather weak entry in the giant beastie stomping through civilization because civilization cannot abide nature and must be cruelly punished for this fact genre and (sigh) doing the Kong thing again by having an expedition go to a South Pacific island where the natives worship said beastie, it got me thinking about the Pleistocene, that era when man and beast battled for supremacy. And good lord did we ever win.

There's a shot when two Gappas (which, by the way, are birds that also swim and have heat breath... they're Triphiban, according to the box) fly over some characters and I began thinking about a world in which large, giant eagle-lizard things actually existed and would, on occasion, fly overhead. What societal structures would rise up in reaction to Gappas? Would we have Gappa sirens? Would we build our houses differently so they weren't so easily crushed? Would a universal health care plan suddenly be a necessity since the monster attacks were so frequent, so deadly, so indiscriminate?

It's also amusing to me that these large monsters can be seen in an allegorical way for just about any disaster, natural or otherwise, that befalls us. It's not hard to go from Gappas to huricanes. If there were Gappas, we'd have concerts for Gappa Relief, 2005, criticize various politicians that they weren't doing enough in the wake of a recent Gappa attack, debate as to whether the Gappas should be killed or studied, and whether Gappa was of theological or biological origin. Or maybe we wouldn't because we wouldn't have the fucking time to do any of these things, ducking falling debris as we would constantly be. Gappa wouldn't allow such idleness. Gappa would get angry that we weren't feeding him giant prehistoric seeds or large sloths.

Still, the film is empty calories. I used to love these Japanese monster movies as a kid; I wanted to be the guy in the suit stomping on tanks and shit, breathing fire, etc. And I can't deny I got the same old childish thrill from it at times. There were a couple of zoom-ins to the Gappa-eye that I thought were cool. But there aren't enough Gappattacks and too much eye-rolling, unconvincing humanity going on here. I found myself wishing that Godard or Kurosawa or someone with the clout and the ability to really explore the concept of giant fucking monsters had made one of these things. I mean, wouldn't it be a better world if we had Bergman's take on this genre? I used to think that all upcoming directors who showed talent should have to make a Star Trek movie, just to exercise and refine their filmmaking skills in an established universe, but now I'm starting to think that they should all make cheapo man-in-suit giant monster movies. Which reminds me, I have to put the finishing touches on my latest script: Godzilla vs. Pretensiousaurus

Day 35: Gerry: Man vs. Nature 6

Gerry: I thought maybe you'd succumbed.
Gerry: I almost did succumb, but then I turbaned up, and I feel a lot better.

Gerry is a breathtaking film, demanding in its simplicity and its persistence.  I know I am nearly four years late in saying this, but I think this movie is a big step forward in the art of filmmaking and will be, hopefully, one day remembered as taking the first confident and reckless steps toward a new aesthetic.  I don’t believe it was shot on digital equipment, but within this film is the promise of the future digital age.  Forget Sin City, this movie reaps the benefits of a digital culture.  It narrows in on the details of reality without screaming about them, shows the boring, repetitive, and monotonous nature of living without commenting on it.  The movie features a plainly presented, yet completely subjective narrative, long, strenuous shots that go on for ages, and an offhanded, naturalistic acting style that puts the “reality” of so-called reality TV stars to shame.  It’s the kind of movie you can imagine being shown to you after traveling to the future (or the past) and, upon watching it, feeling as if you don’t have the proper frame of reference to watch correctly.

The plot of the movie can be described as simply as “Two guys get lost in the wilderness and try to find their way home.”  There’s not a whole lot else that happens in the film.  Matt Damon and Casey Affleck (both named Gerry) go out to the woods, make a wrong turn, get lost, make several other wrong turns, can’t find water, and wander about.  The movie is, really, that simple.

But, sweet baby Jesus, how the movie goes about showing this!  First of all, the relationship between the two guys is depicted in a fashion that is evocative of every single relationship with another male of my generation that I’ve been in.  They connect to each other in a vaguely aggressive joking style that only grows more outwardly aggressive as their situation becomes more dire.  Kudos, also, to the movie for getting correct the absurdity of hearing people talk about video games.  Casey Affleck has a speech toward the beginning of the film where he relates how he conquered Thebes but couldn’t defend his home base because he needed twelve horses, but only had eleven.  This puts it into my good books automatically.  Then, there’s a gut-bustingly hilarious bit where Affleck is stuck high up on a rock and is scared to jump down.  Damon tries to fashion a “dirt mattress” by hauling dirt in a “shirt basket”.  The two are constantly inventing new uses of language to describe their situation, another pleasing and accurate touch to their characters.

The photography in this film is immaculate, so-gorgeous-you-want-to -jump-in-your-screen-and-be-there outdoor photography.  The dialogue in the film is sparse and most of the shots are epic, unbroken, and long, so this becomes a key component to the success of the film.  The environment becomes like a malevolent God, surrounding them, trapping them no matter which way they turn and adapting to reflect the emotional quality of their relationship, like some kind-of amoeba mood ring.

However, where the film shoots off to the moon in terms of breathing new life into an art form that tends to spin its wheels because of business concerns, is in its pace.  As mentioned, there are many shots that go on for ages, depicting nothing more than Affleck and Damon walking great distances.  This had two effects on me.  First, I got bored and my mind began to wander… What am I doing at work tomorrow?  What time is that meeting?  Where are my shoes, did I put them in the closet or did I leave them in the kitchen?  Then, because the shot continued, my mind returned to the movie, but not in an entirely active way.  The style of the film allowed it to sweep over me and into my brain, to the point that there are large sections of this movie where I forgot that I was watching a movie.  The photography, acting, sound, and pace were completely immersive, once I settled in.  Further, because there are so few of them, the cuts in this movie actually mean something.  The film takes back the power of editing, something cheapened by the appropriation of fast, arty cutting by pop culture business interests, by emphasizing the power of the shot.  I was often staring, mesmerized, hypnotized by the film, scrutinizing frames for things I thought I saw but turned out to be refractions of light in the lens.  When one character says, “It’s just another mirage,” I nodded.  I understood and not in one of those intellectual ways.  I’d just seen a mirage.    

I imagine that many, many, many people despise the movie.  It’s definitely not for people with short attention spans, nor is it for those who desire the safety nets of genre, plot, or, hell, the traditional language of filmmaking.  But all of these things, in movies, have become so oversaturated in our culture, so predictable and stale, that when a new dialect emerges, it’s reason to stand up and applaud, applaud as loudly as that one guy who starts clapping when the hero isn’t as victorious as you thought he’d be, and then inspires everyone else to join in.  And where is the applause for this movie?  Are we really so boring and suckled as a viewing public that no one has the courage to say, “this movie said something by saying absolutely nothing, and saying it for long stretches of time”  

I’m so excited by this film and have this gut feeling that someone will somehow show me that Gus Van Sant didn’t do anything new here.  But for me, it’s like he went into the desert and came out with a new paradigm for filmmaking.  I wish I’d known sooner.

Day 34: Go West: Man vs. Nature 5

Watching Go West was a trying experience for me, through no fault of Buster Keaton or the movie itself.  As I’ve written about earlier today, the DVD I received was scratched to the point that it crashed my DVD player and, for about twenty minutes of the film, I had to struggle to make out the images through the boxes, lines, and ghost images of previously onscreen boxes and lines.  Additionally, the company that produced the DVD put a synthesized score to the film that, while written well and evocative of the silent-movie sound, was more distracting than not (especially those snare hits!).  It’s a choice that feels incongruous with most silent movies, especially one set in the rustic, rural environment as this one is.

So, it’s really not fair for me to review this, since the dominant emotion I feel is one of frustration unrelated to the movie.  From what I saw, this is a totally endearing movie with a hilarious sequence at the end featuring thousands of cows marching down the streets of Los Angeles.  I particularly enjoyed this, given that I’ve been watching so many movies with the theme of Man vs. Nature.  Most of those movies have dealt with people going out to the middle of nowhere and trying to play god, trying to create some artificial world of their own design.  Here, it’s nature that invades as cows take to the streets, invade department stores, and stand around in a barber shop, looking at a man who’s waiting to be shaved.  I suppose I could analyze how the sequence climaxes: a thousand cows chasing Buster Keaton, dressed in a devil suit, toward a slaughter house and, thus, their ultimate doom. But, really, it's funnier than it is meaningful (though if anyone has any theories, let's hear 'em! The sillier the better).

My impression is that this is a lesser Keaton vehicle, as the jokes didn’t seem as funny or consistent or honest as the few other Keaton movies I’ve seen.  However, I was greatly amused at one point when a man points a gun at Keaton and tells him to smile.  Keaton was known for playing comic characters with a deadpan, and the movie pokes fun at this.  He’s unable to smile, even at gunpoint, and, so, must push the sides of his face up with his fingers.  It’s a funny joke and it epitomizes the Keaton character.  He never gives up on whatever task he’s faced with and, at the same time, he never compromises himself to achieve that task.  And, ultimately, it’s hard to dislike a movie where the victorious hero rides away in a car with the love of his life: a cow named “Brown Eyes”.

Finally, please take care of your Netflix DVDs so I can actually write about the movies I’m trying to watch.

Day 3: Gates of Heaven

Pet cemetery investor: Death is for the living and not for the dead.

Gates of Heaven is a documentary about pet cemetaries by the (rightfully) acclaimed filmmaker Errol Morris. I'm a fan of his work. In fact, I think that his The Fog of War is one of the best movies ever made. Now that I think about it, a case could be made for every movie of his that I've seen (The Thin Blue Line, Mr. Death, and Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control) being placed among the best movies ever made. His body of work is so honest, compassionate, and reveals so much about all kinds of human nature that it crosses over to the world of high art.

Gates of Heaven is both big and small at once. It is a quiet, contemplative film, but it deals with the way the living handle death in such a focused and nuanced way that it feels epic in scope. It's a beautiful movie, with exquisitely framed shots and no music but that which comes from an onscreen guitar. It's a masterpiece.

The movie details, through interviews with the particpants, the opening of a pet cemetary, its ultimate closure due to financing troubles, the movement of the dead animals to a second pet cemetary, and, along the way, the personalities of all those involved. In the middle, there is a priceless interview with an older woman that, while it may go on a bit too long, nearly had me believing that the whole thing was staged a la Christopher Guest;her manner and speech seemed so real it must have been faked.

On the surface, it is about these things, but really, it's about the way people live, what they choose to do with their lives. One segment of the film focuses on the Bubbling Well pet cemetary, run by the patriarchal Cal Harberts. The movie’s focus on the contrast between his two sons -- the older one worked in insurance for a while, the other flunked out of college -- as they both talk about working at the pet cemetary is exhilerating. The older brother, who has not worked there as long and, thus, is forced to work under his younger brother, talks in analytical terms about how much he has to learn, how he is trying to understand the "dealing with people" part. He is clearly excited when he talks about his work in the insurance business, bringing potential hires into his office where he has deliberately set up many trophies for the interviewee to see. The younger brother gets excited talking about his stereo, the songs he's written, and, when no one's around, plays music on powerful speakers into the valley where the dead animals reside. While these differences exist, they also seem linked in the same sadness of bad choices and failed aspirations.

The movie can best be summed up in a scene where Floyd McClure, who opens the doomed cemetary the movie begins with, talks about how awful he found the experience of visiting a rendering plant. He speaks at length about how awful the plant treats the dead animals, tearing them apart. He remarks that the smell of the place was awful. He says the smell of the place was so bad that, when he sat down for dinner, before he could enjoy the smell of a nice piece of meat... and here he pauses, looks away from the camera for a moment as if he’s just realized what he’s said, and then quickly adds, “or vegetables”… he had to take a sniff of his wine to clear his nostrils of the rendering scent. This moment, where you see a man take stock of the choices he's making in his life, unfolds cleanly before your eyes. The movie is full of these moments and, as a result, inspires similar thought in the viewer.

Going even further, the same man claims that God put these pets on earth solely to love and be loved. Throughout the film, the relationship of the owner to the pet is depicted as one of God to man. The owner is referred to as the pet’s master, and “good” pets are the ones that provide absolute fealty to the wishes of the owner, allowing total trust between the two entities. (This is nicely contrasted as the (priceless) older woman talks of betrayals she’s experienced at the hands of her very human son.) There’s much talk from grieving pet owners of whether or not their pets will be with them in heaven (and much agreement that the pets will, indeed, be there). The talk of God and the relationship of people to pets made me think that perhaps what we witness in a pet cemetery and, perhaps, all funerals, is an expression from the living of what they hope they, themselves, will experience from a grateful deity when they die.

Much to ponder, much to think about, and I don’t feel as if I’ve done the movie justice even with the help of my brilliant writer girlfriend. The movie reveals so much about these people by simply letting them talk. And the longer they go on, the more they reveal themselves. That very thought makes me want to stop right now. But it also makes me want to go on…