Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Thanks to DVD technology, I've been making my way through the first and second seasons of Saturday Night Live, and if watching these early episodes reveals anything, it's that, even at the pinnacle of its relevance, the show was always an uneven muddle. These early episodes are eminently enjoyable to watch, if only for their time-capsule qualities, but seeing Gilda Radner do Emily Litella for the fortieth time lays bare how eager the show was to go for the easy joke and how readily it wasted the talent of the comic actors at its disposal. I'm not all that interested in adding my voice to the plethora of words which debate the merits of SNL, but watching Walk Hard reminded me of seeing the great John Belushi or Jane Curtin hamming it up to eke out laughs from a poorly-written parody of the latest hit film.

Walk Hard is a terrible comedy, unfunny and uninspired. Chronicling the rise and fall of singer-songwriter Dewey Cox, it aims to lampoon the treacly artist biopic film, but the jokes are so incredibly obvious, on-the-nose, and overplayed (triple-O adjective score!) that the result is more Scary Movie than Airplane! Its idea of mocking the conventions of the genre seems to consist of stating that these conventions exist and winking. When Dewey Cox realizes he's abusing drugs and alienating the people he loves, he moans, "What a dark period!" 'Cause, you know, all these movies like Ray or Walk the Line feature the artist going through a dark period, so if we state it outright, that's comedy gold!

At the center of this mess are the wasted performances from comedic actors who deserve better. John C. Reilly as Dewey Cox seems to have borrowed Will Ferrell's acting toolbox for much of the film, but he's more charming than Ferrell and is able to earn some laughs through the sincerity of his performance alone. Tim Meadows has a nice turn as Cox's drummer, and a few more characters on the periphery of the story manage to spin gold out of nothing. The songs that Cox sings are funny too, particularly the ode to Little People sung during the Bob Dylan phase of the movie, but these things do not a movie make. If only the novelty music market wasn't in the stranglehold of the Yankovic monopoly, the filmmakers may have been more open to the idea that the best realization of their impulses was a solidly funny album.

It's odd that, for all the comic pedigree attached, Walk Hard commits the worst sin a comedy can: it begs for laughs. All throughout this movie, I felt like a man in a loud Hawaiian shirt was saying, "Huh? Huh?" after every (presumably) funny line and rolling on with his act in defiance to my indifference. When Cox, who lost his sense of smell after a childhood trauma, regains the ability to smell things, he goes around joyfully smelling everything in sight. When he gets to a pile of horse manure, he lingers on it, remarks upon how bad it smells, and then lingers some more. And it goes on and on, like the filmmakers thought that smelling shit never stops being funny. And, oh, how I would have agreed with them just an hour or so before I saw this remarkably unfunny, hammy moment.

The desperate, flop-sweat drenched writing in the film is shameful. It's like they shot the first draft of the screenplay before realizing that they only had enough material to support a longer-than-average sketch. Worse, the movie's observations about the genre are about as tired and trite as the films it's targeting. Frankly, I don't need Walk Hard to make fun of these conventions for me, particularly as it's got nothing more to say than any reasonably intelligent person. If I'm watching something that's predictably chronicling the rise and fall of an artist, I can be trusted to turn to my friends and intone, "What a dark period!" at the appropriate moments and then nudge them to make sure they got the joke all on my own, thank you.

Prince of the City

The Sidney Lumet films Network and 12 Angry Men are top-tier films (two of my all-time favorites, in fact) and both share a tendency toward the theatrical, featuring brazen, full-throated performances that reek of grease paint and sweat-stained costumes baking under a bank of fresnels. But, even as the actors are biting into their lines with thespian glee, Lumet's no-nonsense, no-frills directing grounds the gesticulations and exultations with the verisimilitude of his sets and locations and the relative stillness of his frames. That these films emerge as such transcendent experiences owes, no doubt, a large amount to their scripts, but enough cannot be said of the light, assured touch he brought to the helm of these productions. For whatever reason, Prince of the City is missing that same deft captain, for Treat Williams, clearly pouring his heart and soul into his part as the lead of the film, walks the razor-thin line between "theatrical" and "overacting," stumbles, and falls into the abyss of acting hell.

Williams plays Daniel Ciello, a New York cop working in an elite Special Investigations Unit of the narcotics division. He's got the wife, the kids, and a nice house that he's paid for with money stolen from crime scenes. Daniel and his partners in SIU work with very little oversight from the authorities and, with this freedom, they regularly, casually wet their beaks with the drugs and money they come across in their duties. At first Daniel feels perfectly justified in this, a fact he loudly and violently espouses to his junkie brother, but when a special federal investigation begins to sniff around for corruption in his department, he volunteers to cooperate and expose the problems in the department. He has only one proviso: he will not, under any circumstances, betray his partners. As he investigates and then testifies against his fellow police officers over a period of years, Ciello's loyalties and identity shift; he becomes unravelled and paranoid as a result. His life is threatened on numerous occasions, his resolve weakens, and he's torn between telling the truth and protecting his partners.

The film makes great hay out of this grist for police procedural. The grit and grime of narcotics work is effectively and quickly etched, and, later in the film, there are many compelling, impressive shots of the corridors of power, where larger-than-life men decked out in tuxedos, judicial robes, and expensive suits (seemingly) decide the fates of the lesser folk, hunching over their declarations in conference rooms and hotel rooms. The melodrama of the plot is neat, well-researched fun; the script has the authentic air of a newspaper's well-documented expose of one man's fight to make things right in a world gone wrong and Lumet's way of capturing the movement and life of the New York locations only adds to this real-world air.

Meanwhile, all this authenticity is going to waste because no one, it seems, is keeping an eye on the acting of the movie. Not fifteen minutes into the movie Daniel has the aforementioned confrontation with his brother and it's like a parody of a scene between two method actors. Both actors are shouting at each other, Williams is pushing the brother, shouting some more, and it's all very deeply felt and passionate, but everything from the blocking to the vocalizations to the camera movements feels utterly rehearsed and choreographed. For all the shouting, there's no life in the scene and, what's more, it comes about an hour too early. This tone-deaf quality to the acting carries throughout, despite a slew of well-cast, solid actors (Jerry Orbach! Lance Henriksen! Bob Balaban! and more!).

Indeed, poor Treat Williams. My only other experience with the actor was as a low-rent Harrison Ford in Deep Rising (he's an absolute joy in that film), and it's clear from this movie that he's probably "got the goods," but no one's minding the store. Particularly in the early parts of the film, it seemed he was going for a Pacino Award for most unmotivated shouting in a feature film, as almost everything he says turns into a completely spontaneous and overwrought cry of rage and frustration with no build-up. Later, as the character unravels, he's awash with ticks, grimaces, unconvincing winces. More frustrating (and indicating Lumet as the source of the problem), as Ciello turns into a raving lunatic, other, rational characters don't seem to notice that he's gone nuts. They talk to him as if they can't tell he's falling apart and often act as if his Parkinson's flavored response is a sane response. The obliviousness of the characters is frustrating and Williams' performance is stranded as a result.

The film is annoyingly repetitive as well. Around the eighteen thousandth time Ciello agonized over whether he should betray his partners or tell the truth about illegal activities, I longed for the quick and tidy wrap-up of a Law and Order episode. The script favors accuracy to life over drama, going through long-winded procedural patches depicting the nuts and bolts of Ciello's ordeal, seemingly unaware that the same dramatic beat was handled five minutes prior. It starts to feel padded out to its 168 minute running time, making Ciello's story more significant than is earned.

Prince of the City certainly has merit, particularly as the investigations begin. When a wired Ciello goes undercover to get crooked cops confessing to misdeeds on tape, it's enjoyably suspenseful and nicely wrought. However, these moments are wrapped in a beginning and ending that miss the mark entirely, and what might have been a fine, even powerful performance is run aground and abandoned, forced to dine on the desert island scenery. Alone.

Would make a good double feature with: Scarface (1983)

Double Feature: Hostel & Hostel Part II

I've been curious about the recent (and now declining?) glut of horror films focusing on torture for some time now. As a long-winded academic at heart, when I saw ads for the Hostel and Saw films, it was impossible to ignore the way they tugged at the zeitgeist-sensing center of my brain. Surely, my brain cried, there must be a reason for these films beyond the insatiable blood-lust of any standard human population! Why are these films finding a market? Why NOW? The subject matter, however, made me a bit queasy and I will admit to not wanting to spend my hard earned money to watch some actors pretend to be in pain. However, after hearing Eli Roth, the director of the Hostel films, speak quite articulately about his intent in making the movies, I decided to swallow my discomfort and sample some of the old ultraviolence to see if there was anything to what Mr. Roth was saying or if he was just a windbag.

Having sat through both Hostel and Hostel: Part II in one afternoon, I realize that it isn't the graphic violence I should have feared, but the dramatic stillness of watching torture unfold onscreen. Two people are in a room. One is helpless, bound, and unable to do anything at all. The other character is holding a sharp object and approaching with ill-intent. Since we've been told by the film that there is absolutely nothing the first character can do to escape this torment, there's really nothing happening in the scene. The only question, the only suspense is, "How much of the body's frailty is the movie going to show?" An entire film devoted to scenes of this nature is bound to be a pointless, dull experience, lacking in any narrative tension. Luckily, neither Hostel or Hostel: Part II is Hard Candy. Both films cast a wider net than depicting the specifics of skin vs. blade, and neither lingers on the torture in a gratuitious fashion (that is, the torture is germane to the plot.). And, while both films are greatly flawed, there's more going on in both than just the easy titillation of feeling scared for people in pain or the vicarious thrill of being the torturer.

Of the two, Hostel is by far the better film. Three young men traveling through Europe go to a hostel in Slovakia, enticed by the promise of sex with willing, beautiful women. Once there, they're kidnapped and held as prisoners by a "hunting club" run by some very naughty Slovakians. This organization offers the wealthy people of the world an opportunity to kill people like our intrepid heroes in a variety of gruesome ways (for a hefty fee, of course... and Americans cost the most!). While this storyline never overcomes or plays with its inherent xenophobia (you mean the local authorities are corrupt and in on the whole shebang too? What hope has a young American in this backward, barbarous land?), it, at least, has the half-believiablity and terrifying simplicity of a juicy urban legend. As a whole, the script is well-constructed, and Roth, as writer-director, credibly depicts the logistics of how such an establishment would operate and the types of people who would patronize such a service. There's a refreshing depth and clarity to the world of the film. And, thematically, there's a fun, though clumsy, modern twist on horror-movie Puritanism--the boys are cinematically punished for objectifying women and become objects for gleeful, sexually charged mayhem themselves. The movie doesn't do much with this, particularly as it's just as guilty of the crime as the boys, but it gets points for trying.

For all of this, Roth writes himself into several corners and the solutions he comes up with are ludicrous and too convenient. When presented with a seemingly inescapable dungeon, I desire more than a chair whose bolts come loose at the right moment or a casually tossed away gun as the means by which the hero escapes from danger. Problematic, also, is a tendency toward easy characterization. At one point, the main character re-enters a place of danger, an act that defies any definition of good sense, even taking into account the first-act monologue shoehorned into the film to justify it. Similarly, the final sequence of the film, in which the hero finds revenge, is unconvincing. While it's tempting to blame Jay Hernandez's performance (which is adequate but simplistic), the real culprit is Roth's script which never does the heavy-lifting it needs to earn these moments. Too many of these moments pile up and suffocate the plot's credibility.

But for all the stumbles he makes as writer, Roth, as director, clearly knows what he's doing. I was surprised and pleased with the editing of the film, particularly in a third-act chase sequence that captured, of all things, a sort-of Spielbergian Indiana Jones vibe. The editing in the torture scenes is masterful too, not too coy and not too gleeful. It shows just enough of the violence, like the film is putting a hand over your eyes to shield you from the horror, but still letting you peek through the fingers. It's shot with real ingenuity, as well. A POV shot through a black hood reveals just how dire the situation is in several stages, taking in all the details of the torture room until it stops to stare at the table of implements. When the main character is dragged through the dungeon for the first time, the shot which reveals the horrors of his predicament mirrors a previous shot that revealed the forbidden pleasures to be found in a brothel.

These technical aspects are nearly good enough to overcome the problems in the script. I wound up liking Hostel a whole lot more than I thought I would and, so, was excited and curious when I started watching the sequel. I couldn't imagine what would compel Roth to create a sequel besides pure economics. There were tantalizing questions left unanswered in the original, though not the kind that I necessarily need answered to feel satisfied. Indeed, often these sorts of questions are the sort that turn a film into a delicious, half-remembered dream (see 2001) and answering them tears the dream away and brings it gasping for life in the harsh glare of reality (see 2010). While Hostel: Part II never quite betrays the original in this way, and while it compellingly deepens the world presented in Hostel, it's also more indulgent, more scattered, and often feels strangely self-important or insular, almost like a fan-made Star Trek film intended for devotees.

At the film's outset, Roth takes the consequences of the original film far too seriously, taking up too much time (and employing too many twists) to wrap up the fate of a character from the first entry. Then, we're back in too familiar territory, following a group of Americans in Europe falling into the same Hostel-trap as the original film. But, just when it seems that the sequel is going to be a mere a remake of the original, the film takes a welcome turn, introducing and following the story of two businessmen who've paid for the chance to kill these unsuspecting tourists.

In following these two wealthy gents, the film finds something new to talk about, though, again, the characters are developed in a simplistic, flat-footed way. One of the dudes is a macho A-type, excited about the prospect of killing someone as a kind of macho rite-of-passage, while the other is a weaker dog, bullied into signing up by his associate. He's less successful than his friend, feels emasculated by his wife, and exudes the never-quite-committed-to-anything attitude of a perpetual bronze trophy winner. While Roth charts the former's excitement and the latter's doubts and insecurities to a realistic end, he comes to a conclusion that is a lot more obvious than he seems to think it is. Still, it's smart of Roth to find the familiar rhythms from the first film and then switch perspectives, playing on our knowledge of what's to come.

That the three victims are young women this time is completely wasted. Similar to Tarantino's Death Proof, (Tarantino is the executive producer of both Hostels), the women are fantasy creations--even when no boys are around they talk and act the way some women do when they're trying to attract a mate. The hint of lesbian sexuality permeating the film has all the sophistication of soft-core pornography without the payoff. And, though the ladies are lured to the Hostel, not by sex, but by the promise of the best, most relaxing hot springs in the world, they're still kidnapped upon making themselves vulnerable through sexual activity. While Roth makes a play at something resembling gender equality by prominently featuring a female torturer (who bathes in the blood of her victim, a la Elizabeth Báthory), he never really dives into the sexual politics at play. Everything's surface level, kiddie-pool stuff and the movie ultimately feels like a safer, milder(!) version of In the Company of Men.

Whatever problems the films have (and as noted, they are legion), this is not to discount Roth's skill as a director. Both films are shot and paced wonderfully, and Roth seems to have a fine understanding of the filmic language he's working in. Part II, in particular shows a certain maturation--for all of its meandering (and boy does it ever meander), it builds expertly to a rousing climax that would no doubt bring down the house if it were a movie about baseball. This ending also features the delightful, devilishly clever escape from the unescapable dungeon missing from Hostel.

What Roth is missing, though, is an equal understanding of humanity. His first film, Cabin Fever, was a fun exercise (and nothing more) in 70s horror nostalgia, but was also distinguished by the fact that its best performance was delivered by a dog. Roth gets his best performances in both Hostel movies from a group of children. He's already figured out how to defeat the old Hollywood adage about never working with children or animals through camera placement and editing, but has yet to grasp the simplistic wonders waiting to be found in human performance. Like many virtuouso genre directors, I wanted Roth to go deeper in his thinking, to really sneak in something subversive and witty, but he never quite makes it. As it stands, after three films, I still can't tell if Roth is a gifted director who knows how to push the right buttons in an audience, but still has a lot to learn, or if he's a savant who knows where to place the camera and when to cut, but can do no more. I do know, however, that he's not a windbag.

Comment troubles & other stuff

Something's going on with the comments... I'm not getting emails when I receive a comment anymore. So, to all who have commented since the There Will Be Blood review, I just saw them for the first time! Most importantly, I was asked if I will take requests on films to review and the answer is yes.

1900 was fun to live blog. I think it pretty well documents how I watch movies. I am extremely generous and excited as I begin to watch most films. With 1900, I had reservations, but was "with" the movie for an hour and a half and then slowly began to feel the piece unravel. But even though it lost me, I was still willing to stick with it and find the pearls that it had to give. This is how I watch movies. It's also an embarrassing document of how easily I lose track of who's who in films. It took me several viewings to fully understand the relationships in the Godfather films.

1900 Live Blog

12:02 PM - Snacks? Check. Water? Check. Computer? Check. DVDs? Check. T-minus 28 minutes and counting.

12:25 PM - Checking Bernardo Bertolucci's IMDB page, I find I have seen only Last Tango in Paris of his body of work. I enjoyed Last Tango quite a bit, though not as much as Pauline Kael.

12:30 PM - Here we go!

12:33 - I'm a sucker for opening credit sequences. I'm trying to guess who did this music.

12:34 - I knew it. Morricone, you great god.

12:40 - Often in Italian films of this period, I experience a brief, but trying amount of time while I struggle to keep in mind that the unsynchronized dialogue is a result of the traditional Italian production process, not necessarily a reflection of the quality of the film. This is going on right now.

12:40 - Donald Sutherland vaguely resembles Paul Giamatti in his first apperance in this film.

12:43 - De Niro totally snuck in under my radar. I didn't realize it was him.

12:48 - Nice flowing shots that introduce several characters. Two women give birth, one a bastard of a peasant woman, the other the inheritor of vast wealth. Cues indicate that the wealthy child is De Niro later on.

12:53 - These opening scenes can't help but remind one of The Rules of the Game with the upstairs/downstairs conflicts and wonderful, lush cinematography that sort-of glides along as things happen. Right now: an auditory delight as several workers clean their scythes in unison.

12:57 - Precursor to the famed Hay Zombies of Zombi 3, several children emerge from the hay and chase the young wealthy boy. The bastard child collects frogs and puts them on his hat. He tries to force a young girl to eat a frog. Is this the young Depardieu? If so, the "frog" aspect is somewhat amusing.

1:02 - We've got a Prince/Pauper friendship developing. The young Wealthy fellow is not as a brave, looks up to the more earthy bastard. The earthy one lays down on the railroad track and lets a train pass over him while the wealthy kid can't take the pressure. We will no doubt see a call back to this as they age.

1:05 - A Hunchback fool introduces the concept of Unionizing the estate workers to the peasants that work the wealthy fellow's land. I'm also a sucker for union films. This is going to be good. For so many hours. I love this kind of movie.

1:10 - And on the heels of that: The frog boy's father instructs this bastard son to learn to read, write, join the army, and attain success, but still remember he's the son of peasants. As he speaks, the kid walks across several tables and the camera tracks his legs as he approaches. It's a beautiful thing, but the first moment that truly rings false... bending the reality of the film as previously established for the sake of creating aesthetic beauty. Pushes too many buttons. Sterling Hayden (I believe) is the father and he is as commanding as ever, but he can't save this moment from some of the emptiness that has crept in.

1:11 - PAUSE. TIME FOR A BREAK.

1:20 - Bladder and nicotine levels back to optimum standards. What I'm saying is that that moment was affecting, but rather arch and the movie did not build to that archness. RESUME!!!

1:22 - Future reference: Alfredo is the name of the wealthy son and Olmo the name of the bastard/frog kid. Discussion that both young men will be going into the army.

1:24 - A gun is introduced. Chekhov's rule in effect.

1:37 - I have trouble keeping up with characters in these sweeping epics, I'll admit. There is an uncle Ottavio who, I believe is the brother of a nun. He is dying and seems to be suffering from dementia. He and Alfredo play at shooting members of the family with unloaded guns. Alfredo gets in trouble for this. I had to REWIND to try and understand the relationships. I'm not entirely sure I've gotten it accurate here, but can't spend any more time trying to get it with the length of the film being what it is. What's important is that Alfredo identifies with the notion that he doesn't belong with his family, that he is an outsider among the wealthy noble class and wishes to live with uncle Ottavio.

1:40 - A general trend in the film's aesthetic seems to be to mythologize Olmo's story, to tell it in elevated tones with passionate music.

1:41 - speaking of music, a wonderful sequence of peasants playing rustic instruments, starts out diagetic then transitions to a fun little oomp-pah-pah tune clearly coming from the soundtrack.

1:46 - I'm unmoored. Not sure where/when the movie is. Alfredo and Olmo were going to run away. Now there's an elderly man who looks glancingly familiar asking a young girl (who is not used to wearing shoes) to follow him. The live blogging is no doubt interfering with my comprehension at this point.

1:52 - Dark cue by Morricone, powerful, as Sterling Hayden discovers the body of the elderly man who's hung himself in a barn full of cows. This is the grandfather of Alfredo, I've just figured out. (sorry!)

1:56 - demonstration of early television as a child is entertained by a shadow of a boat on a wall.

1:58 - Ottavio has shown up. He's a rakish sort, tattoos, worldly, completely charming in just his first scene.

2:00 - just as a conflict was brewing between Alfredo and Olmo where Alfredo demonstrated he had power over Olmo due to his class, there was a goddamned scratch on the disc. The DVD player jumped backwards ten minutes. CURSE YOU PREVIOUS NETFLIX CUSTOMERS AND ALSO THE QUALITY CONTROL PEOPLE AT NETFLIX!!! I haven't even made it 1 hour into this film due to some rewinding, one break, and so-forth, and it's already been 1.5 hours in REAL TIME. Now the disc jumps back TEN MINUTES??? I'VE GOT TO GET MY TAXES DONE AND YOU PUT ME THROUGH THIS???

2:00 - PAUSE FOR BREAK TIME AND CLEANING THE DISC.

2:10 - Okay, I'm back. I've attempted to clean the disc. Luckily this is not a David Lynch film, so I can use handy chapter stops to get back to the point I left off at.

2:11 - By the way, the elderly fellow had a little girl touch his wiener before he hanged himself. Classy way to go out.

2:17 - I believe this scene was cut from the American release. Alfredo and Olmo compare their penises. In addition, Alfredo lords his class over Olmo and there's a brief discussion of socialism, class, and religion.

2:20 - I relize that I am falling into the trap of describing what is going on a little too much. I will labor to stop describing the events of the film and more describe my reactions.

2:25 - The disc just skipped backwards again.

2:28 - I've switched players to see if it will do any good.

2:29 - Not much better here. There's still this one moment that simply won't play.

2:30 - While I'm stopped up, I want to note that there's a bit of an irritating sentimentality that runs through a lot of this movie, particularly with regard to the peasants and their struggles. It is rather cloying.

2:34 - Okay, well, I'm going to have to skip across a bit of the film. Annoying. There appears to be a scratch running the length of this disc, which means that this will probably keep popping up throughout this disc. I'll have to do what I can with these paola stoppas and surge on through. It makes one long for the simplicity of streaming video.

2:45 - Sterling Hayden's death is a truly earned moment of sentimentality. Each time I make a comment about this film, there's a moment that comes along immediately and refutes what I've said. Great moment, great acting. He just fades from existence. Also, he is not Olmo's father, but his grandfather. I am not so sharp about such things, very often.

2:45 - GOD DAMMIT.

2:55 - I would like to propose that Netflix adopt the following slogan in their offices: Don't be a jerk. Make sure the disc works!

2:58 - Real time spent: 2.5 Hours. Amount of movie watched: one hour 25 minutes.

3:00 - The disc is working... but for how long?

3:02 - The use of diagetic music in this film is awesome. There have been several scenes of people playing music and following them as they play. It's really compelling to just watch people play.

3:05 - Time jumps are always tricky. The movie's just jumped ahead in time to the end of World War I and Olmo is now Depardieu. I don't believe I've seen Mr. Depardieu in a film before, oddly enough. Anyway, it's a pretty big jump, but not awkward. Gracefully done. Similar to the Godfather Part II, prior to the jump, we're on a train, after the jump, we're back on a train, both times with Olmo.

3:10 - The hour and a half spent on the estate at the beginning is well worth it. Depardieu's homecoming from the war feels genuine, I was happy to see these people again, somewhat older, like Olmo. I knew them and what Olmo meant to them and vice-versa.

3:14 - De Niro's acting as the older Alfredo is out of place, feels too American.

3:16 - Sutherland doing better acting than De Niro? It's happening in front of me right now!

3:19 - This movie may be Donald Sutherland's finest hour. He's vibrant, honest, genuine... confident.

3:22 - Morricone's score veers from amazing to too sentimental and back again. Sometimes within seconds.

3:28 - Payoff, of sorts, to the musicians onscreen when a group of socialists begin singing at a group of (fascist?) soldiers in order to protest their being rousted. This scene is quite effective, the singing a representation of socialism brotherhood and solidarity.

3:45 - The measure of a man is how he handles an epileptic prostitute going into a seizure while you and your childhood friend are about to have relations with her.

3:52 - Back from another quick break. I'm settling into De Niro's performance here. His character is obnoxious, one-note. He hasn't grown one bit from the child he was earlier.

4:00 - Well, the movie seems to have read my mind again and given De Niro a love interest who is twice as obnoxious as he is, a pouty woman who screams like a spoiled six year old when she doesn't get what she wants.

4:13 - My hackles are being raised. This movie has begun to piss me off... There's a lot of movement, but not a lot of tension. There's no momentum developing, no sense of progression. I'm getting the sense of the early overwrought moments beginning to dominate, take charge. This woman who pretends to be blind is dragging the movie down like a pair of concrete shoes.

4:14 - Her name is Ada. Her voice is like someone blended Isabella Rosselini and Kathleen Turner. And the sound of the blender is still audible. It's atrocious.

4:26 - A fire at the socialist meeting place results in the death of several older members of the party. Their charred bodies are paraded down the streets by Olmo and his not-wife, in order to inspire the masses. The parade is rather involving, but still, I'm waiting for this movie to find its traction. Everything is bits and pieces. The last time this movie felt like it was coming together was when Olmo came home from the war and I don't know how fucking long ago that was. More footage of people playing music as the parade continues. Rather good music too. Don't know if it's traditional or Morricone, but it's great. Now a parade of marchers wearing dark mourning clothes, but red neckerchiefs strolls by. Meanwhile soldiers watch, eyeing the proceedings suspiciously. Really cool, visually... Historically. It matters to Olmo, and that's nice since our sympathies are with him as the underdog.

4:27 - Sutherland has just officially stopped acting, and is now just pretending to be a crazy evil fellow. He's left the land of praise and is now in the land of obviousness.

4:28 - It's not entirely his fault, the script just required him to kill a cat for no reason, other than to demonstrate how totally evil he is.

4:30 - The end of disc 1! Two hours and forty-two minutes. PAUSE FOR SLIGHTLY LONGER AS I MAKE SURE DISC 2 ISN'T SO STUPID! See you at 4:50 or so!

4:44 - So the hilarious thing is that disc 1 was really banged up and stuff, but disc 2 looks almost like new. I wonder if most people stopped at disc 1. I can't say that this movie makes a great case to continue, but I shall press on in five minutes.

4:50 - Okay, disc 2 begins!

4:53 - Typical of the movie, Alfredo and Ada run up a staircase with no apparent reason other than to give the camera an excuse to have a bird's eye view of an elaborate hotel lobby.

5:00 - Another fit and start--Alfredo has to return home to visit his sick father. Affecting, in that Alfredo has run away from his father's ever-growing fascism to pursue a life of hedonism like his uncle Ottavio. But we're straying further from anything resembling a spine to the film.

5:03 - In fact, the film resembles a soap opera at this point. Nothing is happening between the cuts. Everything is onscreen and labored over.

5:05 - That's not entirely true, Alfredo's dad died without a long slow death scene or anything. A lot of time passes in between the cuts. But things are labored over to the point of overkill.

5:08 - The marriage of Alfredo and Ada gurantees that this reprehensible character will continue to pollute this film.

5:10 - ARM WRESTLING CONTEST!

5:15 - Sutherland is making me want to go and edit out that "finest hour" comment. This is Nolte in Hulk unhinged.

5:21 - Regina, a character that I haven't mentioned yet, is jealous of the marriage. She's putting the film into train-wreck territory. The actress scowls, schemes, and glowers. She's begun stomping about, growling like a Disney villainess. And cackling. There's no temperance to this. It's all over the place, like people playing the same song in different keys.

5:23 - 33 minutes into the second disc, Sutherland runs sporadically, suddenly, comically. I doubt he was going for laughs, but he's getting them.

5:25 - Now Ada, on a horse, has run into Olmo's net. He has a net strung up between 2 trees for some reason and entreats her not to rip the net. I am describing the plot again, because it has completely jumped the tracks. "What is this net doing here?" "It's a trap, to trap a bride." This is getting ludicrous.

5:28 - Sutherland and Regina are having sex in front of/with a child. This is evidence that fascism totally SUCKS. Also: Sutherland just smashed the child against a wall. CURSE YOU MUSSOLINI!

5:33 - 42 minutes in: most unconvincing reaction to being spit on I've ever seen. Olmo is accused of murdering the child. By Sutherland. OOOOH I HATES FASCISTS!

5:35 - Depardieu is beaten almost to death while De Niro watches, unable to act and retain his status. This is the best wedding day ever. I can't imagine what they can do on their wedding night to top this!

5:36 - De Niro has called off the reception on account of it raining dead children. The pageantry in the film is weighing the film down more than ever. After he tells everyone to go home, the camera, inexplicably, tracks with all the attendants walking off.

5:39 - I hate it when I have to watch animals get really killed onscreen. But I eat meat. So I deserve it.

5:42 - The movie is really, really off the rails at this point. I really have no feeling for any of the characters whatsoever. Good moments here and there, but I have no confidence that the movie can recover from what it's done. As always, I retain hope that I will see things or experience something transcendent despite the movie crashing so hard.

5:51 - Olmo's daughter is taught by Alfredo's wife, Ada. He admonishes her to leave the kid alone. This results in screaming. Screaming that is outlandish. Then De Niro sighs and says, "Ooohhh... November is the cruelest month of the year." I cannot describe the overacting.

5:54 - Okay, so there was a nice, lived in feeling at the beginning of this film. Soft, gentle, innocent. It was too sweet, but nice. Now here we are with Ada reaching for bottles of wine that are locked away, Regina, now crazy, dangles the key before her. They fight, a bottle of wine is retrieved, and Ada pours this wine on Regina. All this screaming and just... what the fuck.

5:57 - A nice scene between Ada and Olmo with that lived-in sweetness. But all gone like wisps of cotton candy as soon as they start talking politics. Then the intensity, the misplaced, unmodulated intensity takes over. And then we're back to the villains who are hammy, crazed, and laughably unconvincing.

6:06 - Another jump in time, perhaps this sequence will work better than the last one.

6:13 - PAUSE.


6:21 - A well-played scene between the very dissatisfied, alcoholic Ada and Alfredo in a bar on Christmas Eve. Ends with a gorgeous shot of the two of them, highlighting their separation from each other, but also their closeness. Too little, too late, but nice.

6:21 - RESUME.

6:30 - The movie seems to have come back down to planet Earth. It's still incredibly sloppy, but at least the behaviors are recognizable and not nearly so outlandish. Sutherland and Regina have calmed down a little, despite their murdering a woman and covering their tracks. They have stopped cacklling, at the very least.

6:32 - I'm stopping at 7:00 for about an hour and a half. Will resume at 8:30 or so.

6:35 - Depardieu seems to have inherited Donald Sutherland's crazy acting disease in this section of the film. De Niro, playing an older man, is much more tempered. Though not particularly nuanced. He at least seems to have lived and learned a bit.

6:39 - Giamatti Sutherland in da house. With kids now. Time jump! WWII is going on and going crazy.

6:42 - UH OH! Crazy Sutherland is back!!! Overacting, eating scenery, and fucking shit up.

6:43 - Crazy Sutherland and Crazy Depardieu are in an overacting contest! WHO WILL WIN??? (any Depardieu "by a nose" jokes will result in execution)

6:44 - I wonder if this piece of music scoring peasants throwing horse manure at Sutherland (including a man waiting at the tail end of a horse and grabbing fresh poop with his hands as it comes out of the horse) is known as "The Manure March".

6:46 - Train wrecks are train wrecks because it is what makes them good that also makes them terrible. A nice farewell scene for Olmo as he rides off on a bicycle has the same tracking shot problem as the dismissal of the wedding attendants, but it works here as the camera tracks with a chorus of well-wishers.

6:50 - Bertolucci plays coy with a lesbian kiss for some reason. But then fascists tear apart Olmo's home. For all the manure they threw at Sutherland.

6:53 - This is probably one of the most overplayed, overacted movies of all time.

7:00 - Back where we started, the execution of Sutherland and Regina. Just in time for me to call it for the next 90 minutes. I need a significant break, my back is aching.

7:51 - OK, ahead of schedule here. I think I have 30 minutes to go and I'm making applesauce, so while it cooks down, I'm going to try and finish this sumbitch.

7:57 - OK, officially, here we go.

8:00 - The people have Sutherland. He's been a complete asshole, so it's frightening to think of what I'm about to watch them do to him. Surely he's in for some serious torture!

8:00 - Uh oh. A shot of a pig. The last time I saw a pig, I saw the pig killed and chopped up. Donald Sutherland- this is your future.

8:00 - A touching socialist meetup. The local pinkos meet up with some mountain pinkos and they hug and the music swells and it's just too awful for words. Not because they're communists, but because it's so fucking schmaltzy.

8:09 - Sutherland is executed for crimes against Stanislavski. And whaddya know, Olmo returns. The band plays on. Regina is quite sad. This sort of sad villain depiction always gets to me, when people realize, too late, that they've gone too far and there is no redemption. But whatever. This movie has painted him and her as such ugly cartoons that they may as well just have killed a beetle.

8:10 - Old De Niro, meet Old Depardieu.

8:10 - The question here is, will Old Depardieu save Old De Niro like Young De Niro once protected Young Depardieu from the fascists? Will Depardieu allow De Niro to be beaten as De Niro allowed Depardieu to be beaten? This is the question.

8:12 - Alfredo on trial. This is fine, the drama is between the two men, as noted above. It works.

8:15 - ...aaaand then it doesn't! Suddenly, there is no trial anymore and we get a bunch of dancing Bolsheviks holding up a giant red quilt. For SOME reason that I cannot quite comprehend, the trial is not being held because it is revealed that De Niro surrendered to a child at gun point.

8:17 - Few things are as funny as an old lady accusing Robert De Niro of having all his teeth and screaming, "NUM NUM! NUM NUM!" over and over.

8:20 - Depardieu addresses the camera!!! He delivers a quick sum-up of the Communist Manifesto and then a bunch of rabble agree with him. It's told directly to the audience, how fascists spring up. The fourth wall disintegrates and suddenly, YOU, the viewer, are complicit in the film's tragic downturn.

8:22 - That was one of the most misguided film moments I've ever seen. "We've all had a lot of fun here, but really, people are suffering out there."

8:25 - Fuck it, this whole sequence is completely awful. Just fucking badness oozing out of every pore of the screen. There are some good music performances, but there is no drama. It's just a bunch of people celebrating a political victory. And then there are a few more addresses to the camera... sigh. It's interesting in a... they don't make 'em like this anymore, kind-of way.

8:28 - Depardieu convinces the rabble to turn over their arms. And we watch everyone turn over their arms. Everyone. For at least 20 seconds.

8:30 - The conflict between Olmo and Alfredo comes to a head and the two fight in an extreme wide shot while dogs bark and a child watches. The shot widens and widens and widens. Pans over to reveal... The giant red flag being carried away by the mob. A nice shot.

8:31 - Oh my. Now super old De Niro and super old Depardieu are still fighting. This conflict will never be resolved. Not really. If only they'd fucked that hooker together and ejaculated at the same time, they might have found some peace.

8:33 - AND HERE IT IS! The call back! Super Old De Niro lies on the railroad track, but this time, across it... so he's sure to be killed. For some reason a mole climbs up out of the ground. Depardieu watches his "friend" die. FIN.

8:40 - That is the end. The end of 1900. Certainly a mess of a film if I've ever seen one. I'd say, ultimately, it's a great movie searching for a reason to exist. The production was great, the acting all over the place, the tone inconsistent, the script was extremely thin for five hours of time. But, as with many trainwrecks, it's neat to watch. It just falls apart. And quickly. Once Sutherland goes crazy, he takes the rest of the film with him.

I don't hate movies like this, I love them. They try so very hard to do something more than just entertain an audience. And when they fail, they are more entertaining than if they succeed. But it's a rather didactic piece, rather lumpy, poorly paced, and has nothing interesting to say about the two characters that make up its core. A flop, a dud, and a fascinating watch. I have no more words.

1900 live blog - Getting my ass ready

I will be starting the 1900 live blog at 12:30, pacific time.

There will be smoke breaks. This will probably take me 6 hours+ total. In addition, I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to do this, what I'm going to write about as the movie progresses. We shall all figure it out together and make mistakes and be happy about our mistakes and then have candied apples to munch on.

Candied apples are the perfect workshop food.

There's Nothing in the Rule Book That Says a Monkey Can't Play Basketball

The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder.
- Alfred Hitchcock

Nothing's more boring than a blog post apologizing for the lack of blog posts (particularly when the title of the site contains an explicit promise as to the author's commitment). So, knowing I still owe a second review from the week before last as well as the review for the 20th of March, I propose these 2 special events as recompense:

The first special event will be occurring this Thursday, the 27th,... a live-blogged review of the 5 and 1/2 hour cut of 1900. I will be writing as I watch and then summarizing the whole experience in more typical review format afterwards.

The 2nd special event is a compiled instant message chat with my partner, Tara, on the subject of the recent remake of Funny Games, either the original or the remake are films that should be seen yet feared by all. This is TBD, we've seen the film, but finding the hours or so to chat about it is a bit tricky.

And then look for me to publicly flagellate myself for letting my 2 faithful readers down in the month of March. I favor the flail.

Celebrity Ice Capades - Part Two

Bullet in the Head

John Woo's films (particularly his early Hong Kong works) owe more than a little to the films of Sergio Leone. Like Leone's, they tend to center on tough, violent loners who've lost the ability to relate to other humans but through violence and, many of his films deal with the wolfish, masculine camaraderie that develops between two or more characters with these qualities. Further, all of these films subvert this machismo a bit, paying lip service to the emotional emptiness of lives lived without trust or compassion. But despite this superimposed complexity, Woo and Leone's films are really reveling in the simplicity of their characters' outlook on the world. The hardest moral choice facing these characters is whether or not they should shoot a man that they've sort-of, kind-of come to like.

Bullet in the Head is only a little different in that it takes a stab at something a little less arch. The film is set during the Vietnam War and features three Chinese buddies traveling to the war-torn region in order to make some money out of the chaos. The three are quite naive in thinking they can catch this particular tiger by the tail, and soon they're in trouble with both the North Vietnamese army and a powerful gangster in the region. As they attempt to flee back to Hong Kong with their lives, their friendship begins to splinter and they are forced to face the ugliness within themselves.

I have a weakness in me for movies dealing with the burgeoning or fracturing friendships between tough, angry men, quality be damned (to wit: I actually found the relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin genuinely involving in Star Wars: Episode 3, despite it being part of a truly risible film), so it's hard to not like these aspects of this movie. But overall, it's a ludicrous film, particularly when asking the viewer to take the effects of bullets seriously. All through the movie, the characters leap about with guns blazing, but there's absolutely no sense that these things actually fire bullets. Rather, they seem to emit a generalized swath of destruction that explodes windows, drywall, and t-shirts. There's nothing wrong with this; indeed, the hyper-reality is a large part of what's appealing about Woo's work. Bullet in the Head, though, is hilariously inconsistent. It tries to give us the fun of shoot-outs where people empty clips at one another, but then asks us to contemplate how horrible various war crimes are. About as horrible as being shot by a man leaping at you in slow-motion, I'd wager.

At the shootouts and the tough guy archetypes, Woo is aces. His style of staging action scenes has been labeled "balletic" ad nausea, but it's as true now as it ever was, even after the years of Hollywood folk borrowing his technique for their own shallow purposes. Watching these sequences is very much like viewing the oft-coveted, too-rarely-seen dance-off and one wonders when Woo will let his characters put down the guns and pick up the ballet shoes.

But, at least in Bullet in the Head, Woo fails at just about everything else. The first half hour or so when Woo sets up the characters is confusing and overedited. In these opening moments, every shot feels too short, and every scene too long. It's like the movie is hiding behind the editing, trying to hide its character development or make the dialogue scenes as exciting or thrilling as the gun play. It isn't until the violence kicks in that one gets a sense as to who these people are, and even then they're pretty much reduced to one character trait apiece. There are some actresses in this film that should be ashamed for agreeing to appear as such weak-willed fantasy objects. And in the movie's final act, the characters brood endlessly over their suffering with nary a hint that they bear any responsibility for it. Like the guns, they bear no resemblance to anything from our world. But rather than using that to achieve a larger-than-life mythos for any of these characters as sometimes results from similar endeavors (see: Plissken, Snake), it serves to make them seem like the half-formed fantasy characters created by breathless children playing guns. And then we're supposed to care about their suffering and feel pleased when one of them takes revenge in the final, interminable scene? Please.

It's been some years since I've seen Woo's major Hong Kong works, Hard Boiled or The Killer, and so can't account for the quality of either excepting the voice of myself as a delighted sixteen-year-old (who also, it should be noted, totally, completely, without any reservation dug Woo's Jean-Claude Van Damme starring American debut, Hard Target, and would probably have had trouble seeing how absolutely shitty the Star Wars prequels were). While watching Bullet in the Head, though, I began to wonder if my previous affinity for these John Woo films was not solely due to my aforementioned weakness for the cry of the lonely, afflicted men that populated them. Aside from the opening, the film works in individual scenes, but they feel pulled out of different films. When glorying in the movement of excessive violence, Bullet in the Head soars. When trying to show serious consequences to this violence, it shoots itself in the foot.

Celebrity Ice Capades

Chudsploitation

I just had to give a link to this...

Devin Faraci, a great writer working for CHUD, has started a new online column called "Chudsploitation." The focus is on weird, lesser-known, grimy, exploitation films, exploring his (our) fascination with them, and the like. He's kicked it off with an incredible write-up of a movie named Addio Zio Tom, and from this insightful, articulate, and funny article it sounds like it's one of those appalling-yet-too-fascinating-to-dismiss movie watching experiences. Kudos to Mr. Faraci for his work here; it is both a good review and good reportage. It's great to see a piece like this in the morass of movie-related websites (this site included) that feels worthwhile and necessary.

Read it here.

No Review

Am having an insane week. No time for love.

2 reviews next week as punishment.

The Kingdom

Somewhere in The Kingdom lies the rapidly beating heart of a fun, straightforward B-movie, the kind of film that is enjoyed and forgotten until it appears in graduate theses about the cultural landscape of a certain time period or the ground-breaking start of a particular auteur. The plot is full of conventional action thrills and formulaic buddy-cop beats with a high-concept twist, and, much like other B-movies, the majority of the film serves only to drive the audience to its most rousing set-piece—in this case, a thrilling shootout in a hostile Saudi Arabian neighborhood. No one making the film seems to have noticed this, though, and as a result, The Kingdom overreaches. The hollow plot is padded out, drama is sacrificed for verisimilitude, and the film is stuffed with dumbfounding scenes that answer questions no one is asking.

After a terrorist group explodes an American housing complex in Saudi Arabia, Jamie Foxx leads an FBI team that heads to the crime scene—-against orders—-ostensibly to help Saudi law enforcement find the perpetrators of the attacks, but really to avenge the death of a friend of his that was killed in the blast. Upon arrival they encounter resistance from the locals, but nevertheless manage to form a mutually beneficial partnership with Colonel Faris Al Ghazi, a Saudi who helps them solve the mystery by telling them about local customs and using his awesome powers of translation. The film takes so many detours before the characters even begin their investigation, though, that they mystery fades into the background. And even when they do start their investigation, there’s no sense of discovery, no joy in the procedural aspects of their work. Despite the flash of text depicting each character’s name and specialty at the beginning of the film, I didn’t even have a grasp as to what most of the agents were supposed to be doing. And, at times, it seemed as if they might be confused as well.

Ashraf Barhom is really quite good as Colonel Al Ghazi, but it’s a thankless role. The character is just another version of the local guide, helping these (much more important) yokels navigate the harsh jungles of his native land while goggling at the weird, wonderful technology they bring to his rustic backwater (in this case, it’s not a Walkman or a flashlight, but Jennifer Garner’s breasts). The film offers plenty of screen time devoted to showing how very real and human he is, but it’s a humanity I never had cause to doubt, particularly as he’s depicted as competent, sensitive, and caring early in the film. Nevertheless, this dunderheaded film bravely depicts that this is a guy who is able to both be a Muslim and love his family and country. Huhwhaaaa????! Such a noble, noble man, and to think, for the entirety of the movie he’s pretty much stuck babysitting Jamie Fox, telling him that Americans aren’t allowed in that alley or in this room people don’t eat apples or whatever.

The notion that citizens of Saudi Arabia, even terrorists, are, deep down, no different than Americans is the ostensible message of The Kingdom. That the viewer needs to be told this is about as idiotic an assumption as I can imagine a mainstream Hollywood film making. What’s more, the set-piece at the heart of the film invites the viewer to participate in the gleeful slaughter of the bad-guy Arabs. This shoot-out is fantastic, as good as these kinds of urban warfare action scenes get. And it’s the only time in the film where what’s at stake is clear and unambiguous, not mired by unnecessary red tape. When the movie concludes by asking the viewer to ponder the moral ambiguities of enjoying such a bloodbath, it feels cheap, phony. It may be the most unconvincing, ridiculous moral to the end of a film since the racial harmony ending of Volcano, where a little boy looked at the ash-covered survivors of a Los Angeles volcano and declared, “They all look the same.”

Would be a good double feature with: Proof of Life

Oil!

When There Will Be Blood is over, on first reflection, it feels as if it's said nothing. The film has no immediately apparent over-arching thesis that people (myself included) love to discuss at breakfast tables or on internet forums, nor does it seem like a movie which would yield treasures after applying the regular subtextual analysis that often makes sense of difficult films. Over time, it retains this impenetrability, but it ceases to matter so much. The movie is so good doing what it does, it's enough that it simply is. And, anyway, as the experience of watching this great work dissolves into memory, it becomes clear that what makes it impenetrable is not that it is saying nothing, but that it is saying so much.

The film tracks the ascension of misanthropic, super-capitalist Daniel Plainview from silver miner to hyper-wealthy oil tycoon in late 19th and early 20th century America. The main thrust of the movie's plot details how Plainview harvests the oil underneath a rustic, undeveloped California town. As the oil company infastructure moves in, a conflict brews between Plainview and Eli, the local minister who wishes to harness some of Daniel's wealth and power for his fledgling church. Through this, the film manages to explore themes of family (particularly focusing on brothers, fathers, and sons), privacy, self-deception, loyalty, greed, wealth, poverty, language, life, death, religion, and capitalism. That it manages to touch on all of these themes without feeling overwhelmed in the slightest is one of its many great achievements. The writing is as sharp, intimate, and multi-textured as any great novel.

With the film's main conflict, one might expect it to become arch or mythic--Capitialism versus Christianity, get yer tickets now!--like something found in, say, a Sergio Leone film. In this way, There Will Be Blood certainly has its moments, but it's more interested in the characters than the competing philosophies. Over and over again, Anderson teases the line of allegory, but refuses to define his two main players solely by their beliefs. These are people, not caricatures, and, as they both seethe and roil with the anger they feel for the other, they, realistically, supress their feelings and go on with their business. It's easy to spot that their business is the same--themselves--but Anderson's too clever to simply make some glib point about the commonalities between Capitalism and Christianity and think that's a movie-worthy point to hang his film on. No, he's found something much more captivating in Plainview himself.

Anderson and Daniel Day Lewis's rendition of Daniel Plainview is a stunning and, I would say, wholly new creation. At times, he's some sort-of capitalist, Frankenstein monster, a simulacrum of humanity cobbled together from competition and greed. But the portrayal goes deeper. He has an adopted son who he clearly cares for, and the anxiety he feels when his son stands in the way of his financial success makes him endearing. His indifference to the suffering of others inspires rage. But through it all, he knows what he wants and is so unflinchingly determined to get it, that the sheer force of his personality compels an unwavering attention. The movie reflects this, zeroing in on Plainview with the long-take intensity of an interrogator. And, yet, despite the fact that the movie runs for over two and a half hours and Plainview is nearly always onscreen, he remains an enigmatic character, his psychology as foreign as a Martian's. He's presented as a man who fiercely guards his privacy, but it feels like he's hiding himself against us, the audience. Or maybe Anderson's camera is bearing down on him so fervently, that he can't help but retaliate with a dogged insistence that he need not show everything there is to him.[1] Whatever the case, the creation is a terrifying mystery. And remains so.

The movie's conclusion is disorienting--there's a jump of location and many years' time between it and the portion of the film that precedes it. While debate rages over its merit and its meaning, it is undeniably powerful and would be as challenging an ending to a film as any in recent memory if No Country for Old Men hadn't also come out last year. There's a sick and perverse joy in watching the angry, disenfranchised Plainview, who has attained such wealth that he can afford to isolate himself from the rest of society, emerge as a full-blown, alcohol-fuelled monster. In isolation, he reverts to his former self as the rugged, lonely silver miner but absent the goals that drove him to form lasting relationships with other human beings or the physical trials that distracted him from his repressed rage. Daniel Day Lewis, completely unleashed, embodies this rage with a mad performance for the ages. He stomps about, drools, vigorously eats a steak with his hands, and screams his dialogue with the gusto of someone who enjoys feeling righteous indignation more than serenity. If this performance and the final scene seem to lift the movie off of the tracks, it seems better to blame the tracks than this fearless, unhinged moment of cinema.

Throughout, one can feel Anderson as a master at the top of his game. The movie's so assured in every aspect and unfolds with such density of thought, that, critical thought be damned, I couldn't help but fall in love with it. As every moment rolls by, burned into the celluoid with a single-minded ferocity that mirrors the character it's depicting, the intensity is so eminently watchable, so pleasureful to look at, that it's almost nauseating. All of Anderson's work has this energy, this joie de cinema, but it's never felt so fully earned as it does here. In their structure or their execution, his past work pointed, at times, to the past successes of Altman or Scorsese. There Will Be Blood points to only Paul Thomas Anderson and, in doing so, to the future.

Would Make a Good Double Feature With: The Wages of Fear

[1] Note that this is one of those performances that is so good, you start referring to the character as if he was really being filmed as he lived his life.

The Long Goodbye

Like a lot of Robert Altman films, The Long Goodbye is a finicky, restless experience. The camera glides along, never still, always zooming, dollying, closing in on the faces of the characters, and even focusing on the visual space between two people in conversation. The dance between the angles and the actors is well-suited to this detective story based on a Raymond Chandler novel. The movements reflect a sort-of Chandler-esque patter, like the camera itself is the real detective, getting paid fifty dollars a day, plus expenses to uncover the mystery of the film.

The plot itself is typical of Chandler stories. Philip Marlowe, private eye, takes a friend, Terry, to Mexico as a favor. The next morning, it’s revealed that Terry has beaten his wife to death and used Marlowe to flee the country. Not believing that his friend would commit such an unspeakable act, Marlowe tries to uncover the truth behind Terry’s disappearance and the wife’s death. Along the way, the plot complicates with the introduction of a wealthy, abused woman (it’s always a dame), her drunken husband, and a host of gangsters looking for money that Terry left behind.

The Long Goodbye is atypical, though, in the way it uses its retro, Golden-Age plot to explore a different era. It, subtly, strands the very 1950s character of Marlowe in the early 1970s, a time that does not fit him. He’s not into yoga, doesn’t really care about making lots of money, and, even when facing certain death, won’t remove his tie. His outlook runs perpendicular to that of the more post-modern attitudes found in the other characters. It’s a sly tweak to the whole genre, exposing the moral rigidity of the hard-boiled detective archetype, and leads the film to an interesting, challenging conclusion.

Elliot Gould’s Marlowe is a first-rate acting class on how to deliver off-hand, witty lines while staying in character. It’s a perfect rendition of the hurting, cynical detective archetype, and Gould’s lanky physical appearance adds a new layer of vulnerability to the character. He doesn’t look nearly as tough as Bogie or other cinema detectives, and in Gould’s hands, the detective’s wit becomes his only defense against the violent world he inhabits. It’s a charming performance from top to bottom, and the film is twice as engaging for his relaxed, confident portrayal.

The movie’s full of little visual riches and manages to expertly balance a mostly jaunty, comic tone with very grim, serious events in the plot. The final payoff feels rushed and it’s not led up to very well (the film sort-of meanders to its conclusion), but it’s a startling ending and makes sense in retrospect, particularly in light of its wrong-time/wrong-place Marlowe. It’s refreshing, too, that Altman and co. resisted the urge to deliver ten minutes of explication for those audience members who couldn’t keep up. The Long Goodbye always makes perfect sense on a gut level, if not always a textual one, and it understands that the thrill of a mystery is in diving into a pile of information and trying to make sense of it all.

Romeo Is Bleeding

Romeo Is Bleeding is a convoluted mess, a dispirited neo-noir that inspires no passion or suspense. The plot twists and turns and raises the stakes, but there's nothing recognizable at its core but recycled, worn archetypes of the film noir genre. The film provides no compelling reason to once again dredge up these femme fatales or the corrupt hero who brings about his own spiritual downfall. And, even watching it as a straight homage, it fails to recapture the spark or wit of the films that are its inspiration. As the histrionics climax and ebb, climax and ebb, over and over again over the course of one hour and fifty minutes, it's like watching a ghost of cinema past; what was once vibrant and sexy is here pale and withered, empty and lifeless.

Gary Oldman stars as Jack Grimaldi, a corrupt police Sargent who offers the mob information about protected witnesses in exchange for money. He's amassed a good deal of dirty money over the years, but has a crisis of conscience when one of his tip-offs leads to an off-camera bloodbath where the cops protecting the witness are also killed. Now he's not just an informant, but a cop-killer as well. Feeling that the mob has not lived up to their end of the bargain, he attempts to extract himself from the dirty dealings but finds he's (gasp!) in over his head. Then, Lena Olin shows up as an ambitious and nihilistic hit woman named Mona who's been marked for death by mob boss Roy Scheider (doing his best Kirk Douglas from Out of the Past impression). Mona (double gasp!) seduces Jack in order to secure his allegience in helping her escape with her life. This complicates Jack's relationship with his wife, his mistress, and the mob.

Like all noir-ish plots, this has the ingredients for a good, tawdry time at the movies where the audience feels a Puritanical glee at seeing a corrupt soul punished for his (and it's always his) ethical ambiguity and a concurrent delight in watching a man overcome seemingly omnipotent malevolent forces. But Jack never emerges as a relatable character or anything worth investing in, either for or against. He leads so many contrary lives--cop and mob informant, husband and philanderer--yet somehow there's nary a hint of danger that he'll be found out. There's not even a sneaky thrill at the outset that he's getting away with it. His affair is joyless, his mob relations are testy, and we never get to know his cop buddies. The only spark of joy in the film is when he hordes his money; his love for this growing pile of cash is the only relationship that connects. But later in the film, the movie asks us to believe that he really, really, truly, no-seriously-I-mean-it-this-time loves his wife (despite everything we've seen), and he abandons his money without so much a moment of hesitation. He comes off not as an anti-hero, but an anti-person, a vessel into which the film pours its plot.

Absent a main character, Romeo Is Bleeding also fails to find a tone that reflects the material. Rather, it's slow and moody, takes little delight in turning the screws on the duplicitous Jack, and, at times, even asks us to take his undoing seriously. It thuds along at a metronome-like pace, with no escalating rhythm or discernable tempo. The score's a distraction, too heavy-handed in its references to older noir scores. Even the shots of the film are disorienting; people in the same scene often feel like they're in different rooms.

Though, to be fair, some of that disorienting quality could be due to the acting. Oldman delivers a fun, theatrical-but-nuanced performance, yet he never really connects with any of the other performers. There's no chemistry between Jack and his wife, his mistress, or Mona. Even the wonderfully disarming Roy Scheider can't seem to penetrate the wall of Oldman's acting and forge a genuine relationship. Lena Olin is the only one besides Oldman who seems to be having any fun, but her performance is a cartoon--Jessica Rabbit playing a James Bond villain. Juliette Lewis, as the mistress, just looks like she's trying to keep up.

Romeo Is Bleeding's only redeeming feature is the lengths to which it goes in torturing its characters. It's gutsy to have a character remove an arm in order to serve the screenplay's labyrinthine plot or to have the unwitting hero forced to bury a man alive. A better film would have played with these moments more, found more absurdity in them, and used them for comedic purposes. And that may have been the intent with this project at one time. But if the movie's laughing at all, it's only a nervous, guilty laugh--a sexist joke from a misogynist, searching the crowd to see which fellas are with him.


Would Make a Good Double Feature Wtih: Angel Heart

Edited to Add: RIP Roy Scheider. May the curse of your living corpse haunt us all.

I Am Curious Yellow

Because I Am Curious Yellow was seized by customs and held on trial in the U.S. for sexual obscenity, it has the reputation (at least among my peers) of a groundbreaking pornography, a graphic, sexual movie. This is completely unfair to the film, which is a well-meaning, often clumsy, and honest portrayal of a young woman's search for identity in the confusing political landscape of 1960s Sweden. Some of the images in the film were no doubt shocking to pre-Deep Throat America, but, having grown up in the wake of the porn industry and most modern ad campaigns, these same images feel sweet, charming, and human to my modern eyes. Indeed, the thought of anyone referring to the sex in the movie as "obscene" is laughable now. The opposite is true; it's decent.

If anything's obscene about I Am Curious, it's the convoluted editing. The film is all over the place, with half-baked, ham-fisted conceits awkwardly imposed onto the rather involving character study. A parody of a game show, where viewers of the film are invited to guess what's inside a bag for the chance to win some outlandish (and hilarious, I guess) prizes, recurs throughout the film. There are non-diagetic references to the Stockholm censorship board's reaction to an in-movie confession and a few cuts to a phony newscaster serving as a narrator. It feels very Buñuel-lite; it's meant to be cheeky and witty, but these unclever digressions are distracting at best.

At first, the movie's so fractured, it's even hard to tell which pieces of the film are the digressions; it begins as a film-within-a-film story, during which the director, Vilgot Sjöman, appears as himself and frets in voice over about falling in love with his leading lady, Lena. Bergman, the viewer is told, always advised against this, and as the master's name is invoked, it seems like the movie might be turning into a forebear of a sub-par, navel-gazing Woody Allen film. You know, the one about the insecure director who wants to sleep with his brazenly sexual leading lady, but can't quite handle her own insecurities and peccadilloes?

Slowly, thankfully, the film's scope widens. Lena, in an attempt to learn more about politics, interviews Swedes on the street about a variety of topics pertaining to (then)contemporary Swedish life. She asks them if Sweden has a class system or if women have equal rights in Sweden, badgers vacationers back from a trip to Spain about Franco's dictatorship, and confronts some old-guard Liberals about their own conservative views. This is fascinating, if just for its time-capsule-like revelation of a specific culture at a specific time. If some of the more timely references were lost on me, it served only to spark my own curiosity.

When the movie begins to focus on Lena's struggle to find her identity, though, it's very near great. Lena Nyman, as both herself and the fictional Lena (the blurring of the two isn't very interesting), is magnificent here, accurately conveying the interrelationship of confusion and anger, passion and despair. Her trials are familiar--an affair with a man who won't commit, an absent mother, a craven, intimidated father--but the stark nakedness (literal and figurative) of their execution here works. Late in the movie, Lena unleashes rage at her father, at her lover, at Franco, even, and, as she's knocking over the furniture and bookcases in her room a la Charles Foster Kane, it's undeniably moving. She's a liberated woman, she doesn't know where she belongs or to whom, no one can help her, and she can't bear the uncertainty a moment longer.

Aside from Nyman's performance, the other strength of I Am Curious Yellow lies in the fact that it is, literally, a curious film. Like Lena, it's trying to discover what it's about as it runs. Though the film makes several mistakes, it's clear they're not calculated and are, at the very least, born of genuine artistic intent. A goofy, intelligent, but sophomoric tone pervades the film. It can be annoying, sure, but it slowly earns your respect and then blind-sides you with a perfect observation about human nature.

Explanations/Intentions

This post feels like it's more for me than for anyone else, but for thems as wants to know:

My intent here is to post a review of 1 or more movie a week. I am going to do this for a year and then see how I feel.

I've added a donate button to the sidebar in case anyone appreciates what I'm doing and is feeling generous. I'd like to offer something special back to those who donate, but I haven't quite figured out what that might be. I'm thinking about it. I'm currently unemployed, so any amount of money helps fund my Netflix fees, as well as trips to the theater (which will otherwise be small in number for financial reasons).

I'm planning on changing the site around a little more as well, with better organization and browsing of past reviews.

The ultimate goal here is to hone my craft, watch more movies with a critical eye, and have fun.

Any suggestions of films to see are welcome. Any contrary opinions are thoroughly enjoyed. Debate in the comments is encouraged.

Cloverfield

The premise of Cloverfield is ingenious. The film is a mash-up of The Blair Witch Project and 1998's shameful remake of Godzilla, interpreted through the visual grammar of September 11th. Playing off this cultural landmark, the hoary cliches of the giant monster movie suddenly gain relevance. Every collapsing structure stands in for the Twin Towers, and every moment of heroism is a chance for the viewer to feel like one of the firefighters who risked their lives. A few reviews of Cloverfield have wondered if it's inappropriate or exploitative for this monster movie to call such specific echoes to a real-life tragedy. I don't think so, because every frame of Cloverfield indicates that this is the point. Like Spielberg's War of the Worlds, this is 9/11 porn. It zeros in on a mysterious, scary world (in this case, the irrevocable destruction of the American way of life), and, through objectification, allows the viewer to control the uncontrollable. Viewed this way, Cloverfield is hot.

As Cloverfield begins, viewers of the movie are informed, ostensibly by the military, that the footage they are about to see comes from a video camera found in a location formerly known as "Central Park." From there, the movie is composed entirely of video recorded by a group of young people (and their companions). The cameraman is an oblivious, obnoxious doofus named Hud. He's been tasked with videotaping a going-away party for his much more successful best friend, Rob. When a Godzilla-sized monster attacks New York, ending the party and forcing the youngsters to flee for their lives, Hud continues shooting, documenting the confusion, the chaos, and the destruction. "People are gonna want to know, you know, how it all went down," he boasts. That you can almost hear the cash register going off in Hud's mind is a credit to T.J. Miller's performance.

Blair Witch and its imitators all had a moment where you wanted the person holding the camera to put it down and do something rather than observe it. Cloverfield is not immune to this problem, but, because of the 9/11 echoes, most of Hud's footage actually feels important enough that recording it is doing something. What's more, the movie is the first of its ilk to make the footage accurately reflect the character holding the camera. I became enamored with Hud's dumb, well-meaning POV. He's so committed to his new identity as a documentarian, that he even records the newscasts on the television. As things grow more dire, Hud uses the camera to distance himself from the experience, shielding himself from the horror. And he's not alone. The movie glibly shows others on the street, taking pictures and video of the carnage with their cellphones.

Cloverfield never makes a comment about this behavior, but that's just as well. It's a keen observation about the way Americans experience things in this age of audio/visual gizmos, and bogging the movie down with some didactic message would only cheapen the verisimilitude with which it captures the times. Besides, the movie itself is a self-contained message about the Videodrome-like way we've begun to see reality. In 1999, Blair Witch ended with its characters storming a haunted house, their cameras aimed in front of them like weapons that could ward off the evil spirits through objective documentation. Almost ten years later, Cloverfield ends with its characters pointing the camera at themselves. Having lost their very notion of themselves in this hostile landscape, they use the camera to tell the world that they are. It's a fascinating representation of America's anxiety about its identity and this weird, ever-growing tendency to document and preserve American culture in the face of its downfall (why else would we keep seeing the release of shitty TV shows on DVD while the multiplex churns with post-apocalyptic dread?).

But cultural, shmultural. One can point to any number of terrible films to make the same points. Cloverfield is also a terrific thrill-ride. As buildings quake and infrastructure starts exploding, the young partiers are forced screaming into the streets with the rest of the city and from there, the peril doesn't let up. The plot unfolds quickly, but intelligibly. There's just enough time to register an important event before matters of survival force Hud and the viewer elsewhere. The movie continually raises the stakes and every time it seems the danger is understandable, there's something new up the movie's sleeve; you're never certain what fresh horrors await the protagonists. Since the POV is so limited, the viewer is as trapped and helpless as the characters, and the mystery at the heart of the film becomes both compelling and scary. I began obsessively scanning every frame for clues about the monster's appearance or its origin, half-wishing I could rewind it for a better look.

Cloverfield's not without some problems,[1] particularly with its main characters. They never quite gel as a believable group of people, and Michael Stahl-David, as Rob, doesn't have the charisma or the cockiness the role requires. But these issues are minute compared to the film's accomplishments. After seeing Cloverfield, telling a story through real-time footage recorded by one of its characters seems less a gimmick (as it did in Blair Witch) than a legitimate style of filmmaking in its own right. One wonders what a master of pacing and slow character studies like Polanski could do with this technique.[2] Cloverfield manages to push this exciting, emerging form of cinematic storytelling forward and make the giant monster movie new and exciting again.[3] The former accomplishment, with its observations about how we interact with media technology, makes it an important film. The latter makes it a thrilling, slight experience, unlike, say, the morning of September 11th.

[1]Complaints that Hud's camera has a longer battery life or can withstand more damage than any camcorder known to man are valid, but seem churlish; it's like complaining about how the sound effects in Star Wars shouldn't be there because there's no sound in space.

[2] I have yet to see De Palma's Redacted or Romero's Diary of the Dead which both reportedly use this same technique, but, despite liking some of their work, I hesitate to call either of these directors "masters."

[3] Michael Giacchino's end credits music suite, Roar!, makes it worth staying through the closing credits. This piece of music belies the film's true inspiration.

One Movie a Week

Starting Thursday, January 24th, 2008, I'll begin posting reviews and such every Thursday. More to come.