The Strangers

In a lot of ways, The Strangers is a throwback. It's first and foremost a fright film/rollercoaster, designed and built to scare you and nothing more. The plot harkens back to the hard-edged horrors of the seventies, particularly Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween. Both of these previous films share with The Strangers a certain pointlessness; the plot of all three could be accurately summed up with the phrase, "Sometimes, bad shit happens." That there is no reason, theme, or message other than the randomness of violence, feels, in this case, more like a limitation of the rollercoaster genre than the film, and, really, it is enough that The Strangers is well-made for one of these vehicles. In the interest of full discolsure, I will admit that for a good fifteen or twenty minutes it had me right where it wanted me: a quivering mass, shielding my eyes from the horrors onscreen and inwardly shouting advice to Liv Tyler, trying desperately to save her and myself from further encounters with terrifying masks. Additionally, The Strangers recalls a time when great directors cut their teeth and announced themselves by raising the stakes in the forgiving, formulaic horror genre. It would not surprise me if Bryan Bertino, the writer/director of this movie, went on to greatness, but, whatever his future, he's certainly put himself on my radar. While the film ultimately trades in too many cliches and emerges as too-familiar an experience to be branded an undisputed classic, it's still quite a ride and finds a surprising amount of clever riffs on its well-worn formula.

The Strangers opens with a nice, intriguing setup, giving us a quick summary of what we are about to see. As a 911 call plays and a woman screams about intruders in her house and blood on the walls, two boys walk through what remains of the caller's home. There they find a wrecked car outside, a bloody knife, blood on the walls, and a turntable revolving endlessly. The inhabitants are gone. It's a low-rent, William Castle version of The March of Time sequence in Citizen Kane, showing the basic outline of the plot before diving in, but it's quite effective for a time. After the film flashes back to show how the house came to be in this state, a character puts the needle down on a record and it raises the tension in the theater. When the record needs to be flipped and the needle put down again, it's suddenly clear that the record player is part of a game, and The Strangers is toying, cleverly, with its audience. We're aware that, eventually, the characters will put the needle down for the last time, but not which time. Each instance of this otherwise innocuous act seems like it will bring on the intruders and the knife and the blood. Eventually, maddeningly, though, this conceit wears thin and what was a fun, sadistic game becomes a dull grocery list of things that must occur before the movie can end. Blood on the wall? Check. Knife on the floor? Check. And so-on.

After giving us the layout of the carnage, the film flashes back to a young couple making their way to this very same remote country home in the middle of the night. These opening beats are nearly perfect, depicting the awkwardness between lovers whose relationship is undergoing a new strain. We learn (far too soon, and, disappointingly, in another flashback) that he's proposed to her and she's said no. The awkwardness, tenderness, and animosity between the two characters is wonderfully played by Tyler and co-star Scott Speedman. He, in particular, captures the well-meaning, sensitive facade that jilted men often use to mask their hostilities. Unfortunately, and equally maddening, the scenes between the two of them, go on for an excruciating amount of time and keep repeating the same dramatic beats. They keep telling each other, essentially, "We don't know who we are as a couple or how to be with one another anymore after this shake-up," over and over again. It's soggy with heartfelt, one-note, bleary-eyed scenes, and really betrays the elegance of the opening moments between the characters.

Luckily, Liv Tyler runs out of smokes, the beau gallantly offers to pick some up for her, then there's a SPOOKY knock at the door (all knocks are spooky when it's four in the morning). The titular Strangers have arrived to save the film from the sort-of unearned schmaltziness and repetitive writing that stinks up Kevin Smith films. So begins the fifteen or twenty minutes that make this a film worth seeing and one that has me still jumping at noises four days after seeing it. Moments after this sequence range from good to amatuer, but none match the sheer power and delightful filmmaking found when the Strangers begin their attack. Decked out in genuinely scary masks, they aren't so much trying to harm Tyler in these moments as they are trying to terrify her. They toy with her, knocking at the doors and windows, moving objects in the house around, popping up in unexpected places, and converging on her without directly harming her. What's happening is scary, but seems ludicrous and unreal. Each moment builds on the next until a chilling critical mass is reached. My own brain, trying to rationalize through my own fear, started wondering if what was onscreen was "real" or if the film was pulling a Repulsion-style meditation on feminine vulnerability and employing an unreliable narrator mindfuck (it wasn't).

A single shot in this sequence is almost worth the price of admission alone. In this shot, Tyler busies herself in the foreground while a masked man emerges from the darkness behind her. She, unaware of his presence (or of the fact that he's wonderfully balancing the frame), continues her business until this "Stranger" disappears back into darkness. The use of a masked figure stalking the edges of a widescreen frame (and balancing it, thus giving us what we unconsciously wanted all along) is nothing John Carpenter didn't do 30 years ago, but this works all on its own. Scarier than the figure is the figure's disappearance. He disappears before Tyler sees him, and the darkened doorway now contains multitudes, dredging up all manner of childhood boogeymen. This is masterful horror filmmaking. It's a prefect combination of elements, coalescing into an iconic, classic image that speaks to the fragility of existence and the fear of the unknown. I wouldn't hesitate to call this moment in this otherwise commercial, manipulative movie a work of art. As such, it makes all of the moments in the film when the movie employs cliched, cheap scare techniques (something pops up and the soundtrack makes a loud noise... two for flinching!) or, worse, false scare techniques (same as previous, but as it turns out it was just the cat!) seem even more shoddy and manipulative than they usually do, the way the sheer speed and noise of an old wooden roller coaster will sometimes put to shame its shinier, loopier counterparts.

Surprise Party

I just did something I haven't done in forever. I went to the movies and bought a ticket for a movie about which I had nearly no knowledge. The film was The Strangers,and I only knew (vaguely at that) that it was a horror film.

I seriously think it's been since seeing The Usual Suspects that I've gone into a movie with so little foreknowledge.

The movie was all right. Read about it on Sunday. Or Monday as it happens.

I am ignoring the Sex and the City movie because I completely missed the boat on the show. I'm happy, though, to see that there's a culturally significant, no-doubt shitty movie out there that plays primarily to women rather than men for once. The theater was crawling with women, all in the same demographic, all buying tickets for this film. You go girls. I'M NOT A MISOGYNIST!

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

New rule: no more movie-going nostalgia. It's not that I hated Indy 4... I didn't. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it a lot. Walking out of the theater, I remarked, "Well, that was actually not too bad." The lesson of the Star Wars prequels burned into me, I had gone expecting disaster, expecting the entire beloved series to be tarnished by this curiously late-game entry into the series. But, hey, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull doesn't commit any serious infractions to the character or the legacy of films that precede it... certainly none more injurious than those found in Last Crusade. And it's pleasant enough, though it's plotting is weak (even for an Indiana Jones film) and Spielberg makes some bracingly stupid choices at times (usually marked by some really embarrassing CGI). But while it's pleasant and nice to see Harrison Ford reprise the role (and it really, really is... Ford is as charming as ever here and what affection I have for the film I lay almost entirely at his feet), the experience of the film is maddening and empty, and the thing really that kills me is how irrelevant it all feels. At this point, the Indiana Jones films have acted as a template for countless imitations and the patterns and rhythms of the formula have been played and re-played, so without any particular reason to revisit the character, the movie exists for arbitrary reasons. Like Spielberg et. al, called us up and said, "Hey guys, we decided to make another Indiana Jones movie, because we thought it would be fun. You wanna see?" At this point, Indiana Jones is too large, too mythic, to return to the series twenty years later with nothing more to say but the same ol' song and dance.

And so, the new rule. I gave this movie too much credit while watching it due to the power of the ever-rousing music and the familiar, appealing aesthetic of the film. Writing about it, I feel like it's necessary to include countless navel-gazing reflections of how Indiana Jones shaped my world view from a young age, how I'm not qualified to assess the film due to this. But it's just an irrelevant film, kind-of fun, kind-of cute, kind-of dumb. The magic just isn't there; the villains are weak, the set-pieces range from inexplicably stupid to mildly enthralling, and Indiana Jones spends nearly the last third of the film watching things happen around him. Pairing him up with Karen Allen again does nothing, particularly as Allen is shockingly bad in the movie, grinning instead of acting. In talking about the movie with friends, I kept almost saying "Nazis" instead of "Russians" or "Soviets," which tells me that the time period wasn't used to any good effect. Even the score uses too many cues from previous films (why is the Ark's theme from Raiders used here?). I give Spielberg credit for eliciting warmth and some degree of excitement from such a sloppy script. But there's no sweat, no dirt under the fingernails of this movie, and as it turns out, that was an essential part of the previous films' charm all along.

Things that happened to me last week

1. I became terrifyingly ill.
2. While sick, I watched The Golden Compass, intending to write about it. After seeing it, I felt the less said about this horribly mediocre movie, the better. No need to further beat this sorry thing down.
3. I completed re-watching the previous three Indiana Jones films in preparation for the release of the fourth movie this Thursday. My girlfriend and I have been watching 1 of these per week for the past three weeks. It goes without saying that Raiders of the Lost Ark is the best of the lot, and I still find that I like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade the least of all three, despite age making Temple of Doom's horrifying flaws much more apparent than before. It's just that Temple, for all of its problems, is a bit more pure, more of a stand-alone piece (it wouldn't have been as good an introduction to the character as Raiders, but could stand alone outside of Raiders) whereas Crusade has the lazy air of franchise around it. And let's be clear: I love all three films like favored members of a family.
4. I turned 30.
5. My ever dreamy girlfriend somehow gave me an Xbox 360 Elite and Grand Theft Auto 4 on my birthday (my "gamertag" is Docpotato if anyone cares).
6. I forgot about everything else for several days in a row.

See you after Indiana Jones and the Skull of Crystal Meth (or WHATEVER) comes out.

Iron Man

It's clear that things are going to be far too insular or self-congratulatory or poorly thought out in Iron Man when Robert Downey Jr, as Tony Stark, shows the plans for a robotic exoskeleton to his cellmate in a terrorist-run prison. The terrorists have captured Stark, an ingenious weapons manufacturer and engineer, so that they can force him to build his latest weapon of mass destruction for their use, not the US government's. Rather than capitulate to their demands, Stark decides to use the resources they provide him to craft the super-suit that will allow him to defeat his captors and gain his freedom. The cellmate, a man of not inconsiderable intelligence, looks at Stark's blueprints and, rather than ask, "What is that? A robot?" or any of the myriad rational responses to Stark's farfetched, ludicrous idea, intones with great reverence, "Impressive." It's not that it's not impressive. Stark's suit, even when cobbled together under these less-than-ideal conditions, is, indeed, the stuff dreams are made of. But at this moment the cellmate, the stand-in for the audience who acts as Watson to Stark's Holmes, has already bought the bill of goods. And, thus, in this early moment, the film assumes that the audience has too.

One scene or moment like this wouldn't be a particularly notable problem, but Iron Man's script keeps making the same problem over and over again. After Stark escapes from this prison, destroying the first incarnation of his supersuit in the process, he returns to the United States with a newfound political outlook. He announces, to the chagrin of his business partner, played by Jeff Bridges, that his company will abandon weapons manufacturing (where it has found great success) and focus on more altruistic pursuits. This creates considerable hubbub and Bridges, protecting his stock, I guess, chafes at such idealism. The film is poised to be a philosophical battle (Altruism vs. Capitalism, do we need advanced weapons to protect peace? and other such conundrums) between the two characters, but then Downey, for reasons that seem murky at best, begins building another one of his suits and all loftier ideas dissipate under the too-familiar story arc of an emerging superman. It's disappointing for a lot of reasons, mostly because the script never follows through on any of its more interesting concepts, but also because the actions of the characters feel so rote and perfunctory. At the end of the film, a newspaper article's headline reads something like, "Who is Iron Man?" but because the film focuses more on the construction of the suit than its utilization for vigilante justice in the public sphere, it doesn't seem as if Iron Man has really done enough to earn such a moniker. Again, it's like the movie assumes everyone is so completely on board with what it's going about, it doesn't have to work as hard to bring you into the world.

The film, as you've probably heard, is almost a success based on Robert Downey Jr.'s performance alone. Miraculously teasing the line between irony and earnestness, Downey brings off both Stark's hostility to the lesser mortals who don't possess his wealth of knowledge and his yearning for meaningful human contact with considerable charm. But, more than this, Downey, somehow manages to exemplify the American mood of the moment, giving us a hero who's drunk on American excess but plagued with non-specific liberal guilt over the global cost of his toys. In the current political climate, it is an endearing fantasy to see a successful corporate fellow renounce the means by which he gained his wealth and speak the truth about his own complicity in the horrors he's helped bring about. Anchoring the film with this utterly enjoyable performance was a smart move; Downey's playing at a higher level than the script and his work is a rising tide that lifts the entire operation from middling to highly enjoyable.

Even still, the whole thing feels pointless and milquetoast. It ends with a drab showdown between Downey and Bridges who battle it out in respective exoskeletons, but there's not a whiff of invention in this sequence. Bridges has a clunky, oversized suit that moves slowly, so the fight is often like watching a turtle battle a balloon (without the hilarious novelty of actually watching a real turtle literally battling a balloon). It's especially frustrating as Bridges plays a fun, charming corporate slimeball and his declared motivations are a perfect mirror of Tony Stark's. His climbing into a similar suit immediately puts him in a weaker position than the hero, since it's clear that he doesn't have the intimate understanding of the technology that Tony Stark possesses. His only advantage, then, is one of firepower, and if there's anything audiences weaned on the lessons of Star Wars (which are, of course, many of the same lessons the U.S. learned from the failure of the Vietnam War) understand it's that there's always a two-meter exhaust port on the hulking technology that the lesser folk can exploit. The stakes in this fight feel so small, so insignificant that all excitement is drained from the procedings. I left wishing that the scriptwriters had taken a page from Robocop, a film whose characters were smart enough to understand that technology is not nearly as threatening as people. (I also wished that the film began at the very moment it ends, since that was the moment in Iron Man that felt new, exciting, and actually interesting.)

Thursdays are not working out.

So, this is no good on Thursdays anymore. We're switching to Sundays. Starting today.

I Am Legend

In its pre-title sequence, I Am Legend articulates the dread in all post-apocalyptic fiction with such grace and subtlety that it could almost be a stand-alone short, the Tiffany piece in a science-fiction film festival. Will Smith, the last man alive in New York City, speeds along in a fast car, his dog next to him, chasing a herd of deer through the crumbling, abandoned streets. He separates and corners a straggler and is about to bring the animal down with a high-powered rifle, when a lion family emerges from the urban wilderness and takes his kill for their own. Smith, recognizing that, in spite of his technology, the lions have the upper hand, backs off. Man is monkey again, a weak animal in a vicious, natural world. This, in itself, is a fitting tribute to the book the film is based on. Richard Matheson's I Am Legend is, inevitably, a completely different animal than this film adaptation (to my astonishment, while watching this I realized that I have yet to see the two prior adaptations: The Last Man on Earth and The Omega Man), but the ultimate message of the novel is that man's place at the top of the food chain is precarious. And, while the film, surprisingly, maintains this quietly competent and faithful (in spirit, at least) rendition of events from this very influential novel for much of its running time, it also fearlessly unleashes an atrocious third act, disappointing in its incongruity with the rest of the film and sloppy in its execution.

Though, even before this dissatisfying conclusion, the film has already been burdened by some unconscionably unconvincing monsters. The problem lies, not so much in the quality of the effects--though they are indeed distractingly artificial, one doesn't exactly love Ray Harryhausen's monsters for their realism, after all--as in the conceptual confusion surrounding them. The monsters are just never well-defined. They're basically zombies with the appetites (blood) and allergies (sunlight) of vampires. The film labors to give the creatures some pseudo-scientific validity ("they're allergic to UV rays" or whatever) but, in the meantime, negates to give them a whit of personality. Halfway through the film, these mindless drones set a trap for Smith and unleash their zombie dogs upon him, and the abstract thought required for both setting the trap and successfully domesticating zombie animals is at odds with everything the movie has taught the viewer about these zompires. The movie drops a few hints that there is more to know about these creatures (perhaps they're smarter than Smith assumes!) but, then, at its conclusion, turns them back into mindless, personality-free zombies. They may as well be lions.

The fact that most everything else in the film is so well-rendered makes these creations stick out all the more. The city is spooky, deserted, and hostile. Smith, himself, turns in a convincing, winning performance as the half-sane Robert Neville, sole surviving human in New York. As an actor, Smith has always been charming, and even here in grief-stricken insanity he oozes movie-star charisma. He's tasked with performing in many, many one-sided dialogue scenes--with the dog, with the mannequins that Neville has stationed around the city in order to trick himself into believing the city is still populated--and the conviction he brings to them is winning and disturbing at once (Smith seems able to project his charm onto everything in his vicinity). It's not surprising that Smith excels in the role, though, when one considers the life of his character. For his daily routine, Neville exercises to keep his body in shape, dons a lab coat and stands in front of a camera while spouting some pseudo-scientific gibberish, has one-sided dialogue scenes with expressionless stand-ins, and watches movies, all the while isolated from any significant human contact. He lives like a movie star.

Watching Neville interact with this corroded, weeded wasteland is as compelling as any post apocalypse film I can think of, and the film produces a very real, very acute sense of dread from his isolation within this giant metropolis. After about an hour, though, the film introduces two new human characters and the movie falls apart. The reasons given for the arrival of this woman and little boy destroys any of the viewer's leftover suspension of disbelief that wasn't already eradicated by the CGI beasties, and, worse, the movie itself doesn't know what to do with them. They sort-of wander about, cooking eggs, hanging out in the periphery of shots while Smith continues seeking a cure for the disease. Somewhere around this time, the movie makes an embarrassing attempt to grapple with science versus religion and everything starts to feel rushed, poorly conceived. One can almost hear the reactions of test audiences dictating the plot; it's hard to imagine how else this film, previously taut and efficient, nearly elegant, in its storytelling, would start to feel bandied about by an arbitrary, brainless master (not to get into my own thoughts about religion... hey-o!) and why the ending would feel as gratuitously tacked-on as it does. I guess it's unpopular to make a movie that says we humans are not as wonderful as we think we are, but I would rather hear that from Will Smith than just about anyone else.

Atonement

At the center of Atonement is a much-celebrated, five minute tracking shot following a central character (once a gardener, now a British soldier during World War II) across the evacuation at Dunkirk beach. As he and his companions stride across this landscape, the camera takes in a wealth of visual information, detailing with great efficiency the vast swaths of humanity present at this specific time and place in history. It exposes not just the horrors of war represented by the wounded, dying, or dead soldiers, but also the boredom and esprit de corps of the men waiting to be rescued from military annihilation. I have no familiarity with the book this film is based on, so cannot account for whether or not this is an attempt to capture the density of information from a memorable moment or chapter in the novel, but, while this shot is technically impressive, its use in the film renders it solely a novelty, a technical gimmick for cinematography nuts to discuss as they list the great tracking shots in film history. What occurs during this shot could not be called a "scene" in the traditional narrative sense; it's just a tour. For all of the information the film provides in these five minutes, it neglects to use its wizardry to tell us anything at all about the character it's so laboriously following around.

So much of Atonement resembles this shot, resembles this moving-without-really-going-anywhere mentality. It's a gorgeously shot film with inventive use of movement in the cinematography, a similarly inventive and richly textured score, adequate-to-great performances, and a script with well-wrought multiple perspectives and a broken chronology that pays off superbly in the movie's final moments. Yet for all of these riches, it doles out narrative like a drip irrigation system. The film recounts the destruction of the love affair between the noble, lower class Robbie (James McAvoy) and the upper-crust, mannered Cecilia (Keira Knightley) after Cecilia's jealous younger sister Briony tells a life-shattering lie about Robbie. In doing so, it flails all over the place, apparently unsure of what story it's telling or even why it's telling it. The film is no doubt trying to keep up with the book's breadth and scope, but who cares? There's no spine to be found, nothing holding its pieces together but the title--a title that, it should be noted, is more or less ignored by the structure of the script until the film's final scenes.

Even beyond the famed tracking shot, much of this film's running time is taken up with pointless shots of characters walking through their environs (these walking shots probably add fifteen minutes to the film's length). While this type of thing does convey a welcome specificity about the film's setting, as well as a pleasing visual aesthetic, it amounts to very little as the characters and story don't seem rooted to this time and place in the same way that, say, the characters or story of Barry Lyndon did. After a while, I wished the characters would stop going places and just get there already. I was vaguely interested in the familiar but somewhat surprising story, and these moments were needlessly delaying my gratification for some production design pornography.

For all of these complaints, Atonement actually inspires very little passion (beyond relief that the usually tone-deaf Academy did not reward this middling film at Oscar time earlier in the year). The film is bold and big in a David Lean kind of way, and, though this is very often at odds with the story being told (never more apparent than during that dunderheaded, misguided tracking shot), it helps to offset the slippery, invertebrate nature of the script. While it strides around, gleefully showing off, it's hard not to feel somewhat impressed with its cockiness while knowing that it's overcompensating.

Tomorrow

No post Thursday, April 24. One coming tomorrow, Friday the 25th.

Blame my pants!

Hand me my patching trowel, boy.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be playing with template, site layout, and the like.

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