The Pineapple Express

The Pineapple Express is a mid-80s buddy action film as filtered through a haze of pot smoke. The characters are stoners, but after one of them witnesses a brutal murder, they're forced to run for their lives. As they evade the bad guys and the law, they bicker and fight, but eventually become good buds, ready to take on the local drug kingpin in defense of each other. It's not even remotely believable to watch these two go from pothead to action hero, and, were the film a better concoction, I might not have a problem with this. But the movie wants to have it both ways, wants to convince me of the characters' incompetence and then show them blasting away with automatic weapons, emerging victorious in fisticuffs, and etc.. The tone of this thing is so off-kilter; it wants laughs from looney tunes violence and sentiment from honest pain. Other films have succeeded in walking this line between comedy and tragedy--Midnight Run and Hot Fuzz spring to mind--but this one fails miserably. It's such a delicate balance between the two, that it's hard to know where Pineapple fails. But fail it does and it squanders a lot of good will along the way.

It certainly is funny, particularly during the first two-thirds of the film. Watching the two knuckleheads escape from harrowing situations while stoned provides more than one belly laugh. Facing certain-death situations, they come up with far-fetched, logic-free plans to save themselves and then execute these ridiculous solutions with the complete and utter conviction of children. Giving these two so much to do is helpful; the movie mostly avoids the lazy, counterculture insularity that pervades other drug-celebration films (though an opening prologue featuring army experiments with marijuana feels like it's playing directly to those "legalize it" people in the audience, the ones who would tell you the many uses of hemp if you gave them a chance). As they run from one high-stakes situation to the next, it's hard to avoid developing a great deal of affection for these two losers, particularly James Franco's Saul. Franco's performance is a delight. He's got it down pat--the leap from one random idea to the next, the continual need for approval, the "I love you, man" smile. As the straighter man in the duo, Seth Rogen is competent and funny, though his work here feels rather one-note. This may be why the relationship between the two never quite gels; they're clearly having fun, but when the movie asks them to be upset with one another, it's as unconvincing as their marksmanship. To be fair, I think the script has failed the moment more than the acting. They've just evaded death and serious injury in gunfights, fist-fights, high-speed chases, and more, all while completely stoned, and Rogen's character has the gall to shout at Franco, "We don't function well when we're high." Dude, lighten up. If anything you're doing better.

Of course, the character has a reason to be so sour at the moment--his girlfriend's just broken up with him--but, here and in the whole film, there's no connective tissue from one moment to the next. So, while some scenes are funny and work by themselves, the film doesn't work as an entire piece. But, the film is undisciplined and sloppy anyway. Scenes habitually go on far longer than they need to and outwear their welcome. While these scenes play on, you can imagine everyone cracking up on set or in the editing room, but on screen the rhythm is off (probably due to the previous scene going on and on). It sometimes veers into the pathetic "anything-for-a-laugh" mentality that so alienated me from Walk Hard. And, I especially grew tired of the way it relied on overdubbing a funny quip from Rogen over wide shots or cut-aways. All this is ignoring the action set-piece that ends the film, a sequence that goes on for (it must be) 500 years, drains away everything that was funny or endearing about the two leads, and seems to want to both lampoon and be a genuine entry in the buddy action genre. Again, this can work (and again, Hot Fuzz springs to mind), but here it falls flat. Mostly, I just didn't believe the film. It hadn't convinced me that the villains were genuinely threatening or that there were any real stakes in this sequence. It's like watching someone else play a video game, and a not very good one at that.

There are bright spots to be found--Kevin Corrigan should be showered with candies and treasure for his turn as a domesticated henchman. Whenever he was onscreen, I wished the film was about him--and there are some very, very funny high-points, but The Pineapple Express is clunky, disappointing. Translating the tropes of an action film to a couple of pot-addled protagonists seems like a great idea--what do action heroes do, but follow their gut with the conviction of children?--but it misfires. Its failure reminded me of the success of The Big Lebowski, a film that translated the tropes of the hard-boiled mystery novel to a similarly drug-addled protagonist. When The Dude recounts the Raymond Chandler-esque events of the film to the two squares in the back of the limo, it's hilarious and almost a welcome critique of the crazy, unmanageable plots of these mystery stories. You try to explain The Big Sleep to someone who hasn't seen it and see if you sound any more sober. I think a similar sort of transcendence could be found by having two completely stoned action buddies fighting in an action movie plot, but it's not here. The climax of The Pineapple Express is a huge explosion when it should have been a bong hit.

Would be a good double feature with: The Big Lebowski

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)

Day 79: The Phantom of Liberty

Luis Buñuel, I feel comfortable saying now, is one of my favorite filmmakers.  The Phantom of Liberty is the third Buñuel film I've seen and watching it, I felt as if it was taking place inside my brain, transforming half-formed ideas from my feeble mind into fully fledged cinematic reality.  The movie had me, quite literally, screaming with laughter as the multitude of random, bizarre plotlines played out before me and, in addition, touched my thinking bone as well.  It's a brilliant film.

A constant lesson in dramaticus interruptus, a phrase I've just coined, the movie follows a plotline or a character until things get interesting and then shifts to focus on a different character or plotline.  It plays out like a particularly warped (and deadpan) episode of Monty Python or Mr. Show, with inspired, hilarious vignettes or sketches of an altered reality.  The moments of transition from one vignette to the next are linked by an emotional stream-of-consciousness that never once lets the viewer down, unless, that is, the viewer happens to desire any degree of dramatic closure for these fundamentally banal storylines.  And the movie plays everything absolutely straight, positing as reality alternative worlds where, for instance, a couple denounces photographs of landmarks around the world as obscene while being turned on by them at the same time.

What's more, all of these satirical worlds have a thesis to them that makes sense, if only in the subconscious.  The Phantom of Liberty is the perfect antidote to Godard's strident, didactic voice.  Utilizing an eloquent, purposeful (and masterful) sense of absurdity, it says everything about the society watching the film and the society that made the film that Weekend said, only with more wit and guile than Godard used.  Perfection in every way.

Day 73: Paris, Texas

The confidence this thoughtful movie exudes as it unfolds before you is alluring, irresistible.  Its imagery is rich and provocative, like a great meal at a restaurant you just popped into without knowing anything about it, and its script unfolds delicately, placing meaningful details about character into the story in a careful, deliberate manner.  I wish I had two more viewings of the film and a year's time to digest it before attempting to write about it.  It's powerful in a sneaky, understated way, similar to how Polanski's films work, and it's a joy to watch for every second it's on screen.  The runtime of the film is about 2 and a half hours but, as with most great movies that are character-based, I was aching for the film to continue, even while I was happy to see that it ended perfectly.  I don't like to let things go.

The movie opens in Texas with a thirsty, sunburned Harry Dean Stanton roaming the open desert without aim or purpose.  He finds a town, collapses in a small bar, and is revived by a local doctor who, having found a number in Stanton's wallet, contacts Stanton's brother.  The brother, played by Dean Stockwell, comes to Texas from L.A. in order to take Stanton home and reunite him with his son.  We learn that Stanton has been missing for four years, as has his wife Jane, and Stockwell and his French wife have been raising the boy as their own for that time.  The reintroduction of Stanton to the kid is confusing and troublesome for both of them at first, neither sure of how to treat the other, but eventually they come to find ways to relate.  Soon, they're both on the road to find the wife and mother of their family.  When he eventually finds Jane, it provides an opportunity for redemption for both of them.

The screenplay by Sam Shepard is meticulously crafted, withholding details about Stanton's character in a tantalizing way while revealing enough about him and those surrounding him to hold interest.  A moment when Stanton's son fully remembers his dad as a part of his early life from the screening of Super-8 home movies is particularly inspired.  The climactic scene between Stanton and his ex-wife is a perfect moment in cinema, impeccably restrained and beautifully capture by all concerned.  The perfection in the scene is all the more searing for the raw emotions at work.

The acting is uniformly superb.  The character Stockwell plays could easily be filler, but the actor adds many subtle gestures that inform an entire unrevealed backstory of the character and his relationship to his brother and his family.  The kid is fantastic, one of the more believable child performances I've seen.  Stanton, in what regrettably little I've seen him in, has never been better or had a role more suited to his skills.  And words cannot describe the work that Nastassja Kinski does as Jane; it's a small role but she too fills her character with such informed choices that I felt as if I knew her my whole life.

I watched this within the space of two hours of watching A Real Young Girl and, while I enjoyed that film quite a bit, this was on a wholly separate plane of quality.  It's a refreshing dip into the pool of smart, honest cinema, captured with intent and wonder by director Wim Wenders.  This is another great one to revisit every once in a while, and gauge how it's changed you.

Day 49: Passion Fish

I caught John Sayles’ Lone Star sometime in high school and fell in love with the way he made movies.  I loved the density to the material, how it felt as rich and fulfilling as a good novel, and how it didn’t seem as cramped as movies usually do.  What I remember is that there was a world in Lone Star, a fully inhabited world that was efficiently explored through the characters.  While I loved it so much, I was not quite as diligent in pursuing Sayles’s oeuvre as I was for Cronenberg or Lynch (I think I stopped my random sampling after seeing Matewan, my personal favorite of his work), but I do enjoy checking in on his movies.  Anyway, this isn’t about me (ha ha ha, yes it is) it’s about Passion Fish.

The movie deals with a soap actress-turned-paraplegic (Mary McDonnell) and her caretaker nurse (Alfre Woodard).  McDonnell is an alcoholic, I guess, the movie kind-of slips this fact in at an awkward moment, and Woodard is a recovering drug addict.  Over the course of their relationship, they begin to need one another to face the various challenges of their lives.  Dangerous territory and the shallowness of Lifetime Movies of the Week hang over this film, threatening to descend at any moment and ensnare us in manipulative weepiness.  To be fair, most of the pitfalls are avoided along the way in favor of straight-forward honesty.  This is what makes it frustrating when the movie does fall into one.  The montage sequence when McDonnell begins to care about her life again, taking pictures, and working out, is inexcusable.  And the very end of the movie features a conversation in which the mutual power-sharing dynamic between the two ladies, a carefully balanced see-saw throughout the movie, is destroyed by thrusting all power into McDonnell’s hands, giving her the opportunity to act silly-poignant which comes off as trying-too-hard-poignant.

And so, if it can be said that John Sayles’s movies are a lot like books, this is his Oprah Book of the Month.  It’s not bad, though it’s somewhat plodding, and it’s not great, though there are some dazzling moments.  The two main characters are strongly etched with, for the most part, great writing and strong acting.  There’s some outright awful sentimentality (the very end and in the “Mary McDonnell works out” montage) but, aggravatingly, there are also moments where sentiment emerges in a sublime fashion: Woodard’s repressed sobbing in response to the ministrations of a suitor are touching for what she’s not saying or talking about.  There’s sharp characterization throughout:  William Mahoney, playing Mary McDonnell’s uncle, is fascinating when he’s onscreen and David Strathairn puts in a typically well-wrought performance.  And the racial tensions in the movie (at least between the two main characters) are subtly done, palatable, but not overt.

The structure of the movie vacillates so wildly between well-constructed scenes, well-performed monologues, pedantic scenes, and misguided monologues (I never asked for the anal probe), that it’s frustrating to watch.  Additionally, after the third party came to visit McDonnell, I got sick of the characters sitting around at home, waiting for other characters to visit them.  I wanted to like this movie a lot, and I did like it a lot when the movie focused on Alfre Woodard’s character, but its scattered nature makes it a frustrating viewing experience and it doesn’t really come together as a whole.

Day 43: Parents

Bob Balaban's Parents is a smart horrorish film, one that wisely sets its foundation in Freudian psychology.  It effectively depicts the creeping unease of a child who’s come to believe that he’s not safe with his parents as his awareness of them grows.  Bryan Madorsky, who plays the kid, is great and the movie also features a genuinely creepy performance by Randy Quaid as the kid’s dad.  It’s a funny movie but also scary, with more than a couple great horror movie moments.  Unfortunately, the movie dives into the pool of convention towards the end and it’s here that the filmmaking itself fails the film and its ideas.

But still, lots to like in the movie.  I was surprised at how affected I was by the horror moments.  A scene in which a social worker is menaced by an unknown assailant in a pantry is as good as any Argento sequence (though only ¼ as long), particularly in the editing.  A few images from the movie stand out to me as well: sausages snaking around a little kid, a hand sticking out of a garbage disposal, and Randy Quaid’s sweaty, angry expression.  And, boy, did I like the moment when, as the camera panned past a wall in a house, the cheerful music that was playing faded out as we entered the next room.

The relationship between the three principles (Boy, Father, Mother) is handled well.  Because the Father and the Boy are at odds with each other, the Mother is constantly picking which side she’ll be on and, more often, it is on the side of the Boy.  It’s all very Freudian, as I said, and acted well by Mary Beth Hurt.  Quaid is a mean dad, telling his kid scary stories to teach him lessons.  The Mother protests, but Quaid’s eventual revelation of why he’s so hard on his son is great:  “He scares me.  He doesn’t look like me, he doesn’t act like me…”

It’s also a nice choice to set the movie in the 50s.  Since the plot deals with the growing realization the kid has that his parents are up to something suspicious, it resonates that all of this is going on in the Eisenhower-era or, if you like, the Father Knows Best era.  The fact that it deals with food seems even more appropriate given the fact that nutritional information and the marketing of the food pyramid feel as if they come from the 50s, even if they didn’t.  

The movie is shaky, though, in filmmaking terms, something that I can overlook if the overall effect isn’t diminished.  Here, diminishment occurs.  Towards the end, the movie devolves into a slow-motion parade that is both cloying and maddening.  I liked everything that was going on in the movie here, conventional though it may have been, but I hated the way it was captured.  This is the most egregious offense, because the movie does have a nice build prior to this and it really destroys all of the movie’s tension.

For most of its running time, Parents is a well-made Freudian horror movie.  I would say it’s the best Freudian horror movie, but Spider exists and covers much of the same ground in a better, more confident way.  Nevertheless, if Freudian horror comedy is what you’re looking for, Parents is worth your time.

Day 9: The Passion of the Christ

For a non-Christian, watching The Passion of the Christ is a lot like watching a Star Trek movie when you’re not really familiar with the show. Sure, you might recognize some characters and thrill at some space battles, but ultimately, you’re left a little confused. What’s the big deal here? I certainly felt that way about The Passion of the Christ. It’s hard for me to write this without taking into account the vast success of the film or its place in the political landscape of the United States, but I’ll do my best.

Full disclosure: I made every attempt to engage with this film on its own level since, as a staunch atheist, I’m predisposed to disliking religious propaganda. Still, I feel safe in saying that this is not a good movie. Its biggest problem is the way it takes a spiritual subject and literalizes every damn thing to the point that any higher meaning or metaphysical implications are sublimated. It also gets several demerits for an egregious use of slow-motion throughout that is annoying at first (Judas is thrown thirty pieces of silver, struggles to catch it, drops the bag, and the coins go flying out, all in slow-mo… where’s the slow-motion “NOOOOO”, huh?) then tiring (as Jesus is being tortured, a figure meant to be the devil walks in slo-mo through the onlookers, gazing menacingly at him) then just silly (Jesus, tortured to the brink of death, falls down in slow motion! And again! And again! And again! And…). There’s a cool scene depicting Jesus saving Mary Magdalene, done silently and played with the right amount of action-movie gravitas from James Caviezel, and I enjoyed a couple of parts that had demons in it (though this is part of the literalization problem… Judas is literally chased by zombie-demon-children onto what looks like the set of Conan the Barbarian and then hangs himself. I suppose it’s hard for audiences to relate to guilt unless there are zombie-demon-children to indicate the character’s state of mind… but I digress) but, for the most part, this movie is full of cheap sentiment, and it’s plodding and dull, hitting the same notes over and over again.

I can’t write about this movie as its own entity, though. I got super-mad after watching this because I remembered The Last Temptation of Christ being a pretty awesome movie and that it couldn’t make any money because some jerks decided that depicting Jesus as having any sort-of sex at all, even if it was in a vision inspired by Satan, and even if the sex was, like, nice happy marriage sex, was a bad thing. What made me angry was that this movie, which was wildly popular with many of these same types of jerks, does exactly the same thing as The Last Temptation of Christ. Both movies focus on the humanness of Jesus to further explore the sacrifice the God-man made. In Scorsese’s version, it’s an emotional humanness fraught with sorrow, doubt, isolation, fear, and anger as a result of Jesus’ divinity. In Gibson’s version, it’s about the human physicality of Jesus, the pain of being whipped, scourged, and having your hands nailed to something. There’s a shameless use of Jesus’ mother (who’s named Mary) being sad that her son is in pain (at one time reminiscent of a scene in Dumbo (of all things)). And, of course, Jesus is in a constant state of pain, starting around 52 minutes into the film and we are given many close-ups of him wailing in agony (sometimes in slo-mo) as he’s beaten. All of this serves to emphasize Jesus’ humanity over his divinity. And yet, this fallible, frail humanity is acceptable while Scorsese’s is not? What the fuck people?

It’s actually pretty instructive to look at the endings of both movies: At the end of Last Temptation, Jesus, played by Willem Dafoe, is given a chance to renounce his crucifixion, a choice that has disastrous consequences for the world while allowing him to have a happy human life for a while. When he sees the consequences, Jesus takes that choice back and dies on the cross, allowing the world to live on at the expense of his own happy life. The Passion ends with God shedding a single raindrop tear for the death of his son, said tear resulting in an Indiana Jones-esque earthquake destroying the temple of the Pharisees (I think), and causing the devil-figure to scream at us, now isolated somewhere in hell (again, I think). The movie then cuts to Jesus rising from the dead, looking out of his tomb as action-movie music builds and builds. Jesus then stands, naked (though the movie never shows his junk, making it better for kids!) and walks off and the music kicks into overdrive like we’re watching Gladiator or something as it fades to black. It’s like Jesus is going to KICK SOME ASS on the people what tortured him!

At least with Scorsese and Dafoe, we had an idea of the life Jesus was actually sacrificing by allowing his fate to befall him. Here, we get flashbacks to Jesus making a table and saying ponderous things to his followers. There’s a Sermon on the Mount scene where Caviezel delivers his lines like a quirky dead-language-speaking high school professor. For a movie that so desperately wants us to empathize with the humanity of Jesus’ body, we are given little-to-nothing to see about Jesus’ mind and so the too, too solid flesh that melts away at the hands of gleeful of Romans is attached to nobody important. Of course you sympathize with Jesus on the same level you’d sympathize with anyone being crucified by a mob. In fact, I can make a direct cinematic parallel here: I felt as bad for Jesus as I did for the Brain Bug at the end of Starship Troopers.