As I walked through the Alamo's doors Sunday night and onto the streets of downtown Kansas City, my ears were smacked by the deafening thud of cannon fire. Then three more rounds erupted. They echoed off the skyscrapers and into the streets. My friend and I tried to locate the explosions' source when a quieter, more ominous din reared and roared. “Shut up!,” I barked. “Do you hear those people?” The chanting grew. So did my pulse.
It was already dangerously high: we'd just been discharged from the trenches of "Mad Max: Fury Road" and I wasn't sure if what I was hearing was real or PTSD-induced paranoia. I unlocked the car and started the engine, doing my best not to rev the thing. Driving through the Crossroads and Midtown, the scene remained eerie: pockets of overcrowded corners and entirely empty blocks. When traffic stopped entirely—the streets resembled the opening salvos of disaster movies like "World War Z" or The Day After Tomorrow"—one of us may have wondered aloud whether it was a riot: I remember that word bouncing through my head, struggling against high-pitched ringing in my ears.
And then the sky exploded in Technicolor. The air boomed in Dolby. I pulled over before my friend could even summon the order: we'd stumbled onto Ground Zero—front-row seats—for the city's Memorial Day fireworks show.
Blocked by gawking crowds with their necks arched, their eyes trained away from whatever's directly in front of them, my standard response is rage. This kind of thing usually has my blood boiling with anger. But today was different. I'd just spent the day at the multiplex. The first feature was "Tomorrowland," a movie I'd been following since its inception because I'm a sucker for theme parks and space-age retro futurism. It was a drag—an overlong, preachy slog. The movie urges, insists we “have fun,” but the brand of fun it's shilling is of the safety-first variety. But it's hard to fault the thing: in retrospect, the warnings to keep my hands and feet in the car at all times, no flash photography, no gum, etc. are plastered all over its packaging. And if, like me, you've held off on riding the Brad Bird Bandwagon of Exceptionalism, I exhort you to remain one of the chosen few.
All snark aside, the best part of "Tomorrowland" is the end credits—a truly fantastic bit of animation that finally delivers on the movie's promise of Jetsons-style zip. But in order to get there, you're forced to sit through a bafflingly misguided climax where the movie's villain scolds its audience about getting kicks from (of all things) watching movies about the end of the world. (There's even a running joke where we see posters and billboards advertising a movie called "ToxiCosmos 3." That's the punchline too.) Sure, optimism is fantastic. But where "Tomorrowland" scolds us into feeling optimistic, "Mad Max: Fury Road" instills it. In so many ways, it's "Tomorrowland's" inverse: fleet, where the former is bloated; subtle, where the former is obvious; inviting, where the former is exclusionary. And if it's bloated, obvious, and exclusionary too, just go with it. "Fury Road" is everything "Tomorrowland" despises—it's a loud, obnoxious, thrilling shred. It's also revolutionary, anarchic, and the most fun I've had at the movies in years.
A septuagenarian's rebuke to the last 15 years of Hollywood corporate synergy, it throws continuity to the wind. So fed up with contemporary trends in big budget moviemaking, it even has the balls to make its subtext text—it has no time for pussyfooting. Both a scathing indictment of patriarchy and a testosterone-fueled gearhead anthem, this is the kind of movie that restores one's faith in the power of shared experience.
Maybe that's why afterwards, gazing up with everyone else at the magnificent display overhead, feeling my blood pumping and hearing frequencies I knew I was sacrificing forever, I may have—probably did—shed a tear. It was awesome.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Thursday, December 28, 2006
Night at the Museum
(2006, USA. Directed by Shawn Levy.)
Night at the Museum is the most expensive commercial we're likely to see. It's an extravaganza of a movie; a huge, hulking affair better suited for theme parks than cinemas. The product in question is New York's Museum of Natural History, but I'm doubtful anyone leaving a screening will rush to it's ticket booth -- Night at the Museum is devoted purely to itself. Like every thirty-second ad on TV, the product seems an afterthought -- who remembers what the "Where's the Beef?" lady was selling? Or which beer had more taste and less filling? Thankfully, that brand of soullessness has a half-minute cap; the inanity of Night at the Museum, however, stretches nearly two hours. It's like an endless word-from-our-sponsors: there's no actual program.
With a title like a Marx Brothers movie and a cast resembling a contemporary version of Cannonball Run, Night at the Museum is all about quick connections. Everything is delivered shorthand, from the lazy establishing shots of Central Park to the insistently emotive score. We've seen this stuff a million times and everything is supposed to ring a bell. It's like hearing the Who's "Bargain" in a used-car spot: a lazy technique that tries to con us in to paying attention when nothing is going on.
The cast in particular seems to have been assembled with less thought for the characters than the actors' recognizability. Ben Stiller, playing a newly-appointed night watchman at the museum, reverts to the high-strung frustration that worked so well in There's Something about Mary. But without the sexual stimulus -- this is a family picture -- he flails about for no reason. Elsewhere, Ricky Gervais and Steve Coogan, two supremely talented comedians, riff on their personas to no avail; it's a bit startling to see funny people be so profoundly unfunny. And Owen Wilson, repeating his gee-whiz Bottle Rocket act again, is palpably bored. Everyone is at a loss; with a script as lazy and dull as this one, it's no wonder the actors regress: they're working with the tools they've been given.
But no one is interested in supplying words -- Night at the Museum is about what we see. It's a special effects monster. The museum comes alive at night due to some hokum involving an ancient Egyptian curse; dinosaur bones stomp corridors, stuffed lions stalk the African wing, and mannequins of historical figures parade. And though the eye candy does provide a few creepily effective moments when the museum takes its first few breaths, goopy sentimentality awkwardly invades much of the film's second half. Night at the Museum is a rare movie that would have worked better without a plot. It's a hoot to see Stiller awing Attila the Hun with magic tricks while pilgrims, Victorians, and terra-cotta soldiers from the Han dynasty roam the background. Too bad he also has to learn about being a good father.
Commercials, by definition, lack art. They're quickies that work on sleight-of-hand and diversion. The ones we remember are simply zeitgeists, catchphrases that sneak into the lexicon. Successful movies -- those we remember -- are often art despite themselves. However banal they appear, there's talent somewhere beneath the junk. Night at the Museum is all junk; it'll disappear faster than the dude-you're-getting-a-Dell kid. Yo quiero my money back.
Night at the Museum is the most expensive commercial we're likely to see. It's an extravaganza of a movie; a huge, hulking affair better suited for theme parks than cinemas. The product in question is New York's Museum of Natural History, but I'm doubtful anyone leaving a screening will rush to it's ticket booth -- Night at the Museum is devoted purely to itself. Like every thirty-second ad on TV, the product seems an afterthought -- who remembers what the "Where's the Beef?" lady was selling? Or which beer had more taste and less filling? Thankfully, that brand of soullessness has a half-minute cap; the inanity of Night at the Museum, however, stretches nearly two hours. It's like an endless word-from-our-sponsors: there's no actual program.
With a title like a Marx Brothers movie and a cast resembling a contemporary version of Cannonball Run, Night at the Museum is all about quick connections. Everything is delivered shorthand, from the lazy establishing shots of Central Park to the insistently emotive score. We've seen this stuff a million times and everything is supposed to ring a bell. It's like hearing the Who's "Bargain" in a used-car spot: a lazy technique that tries to con us in to paying attention when nothing is going on.
The cast in particular seems to have been assembled with less thought for the characters than the actors' recognizability. Ben Stiller, playing a newly-appointed night watchman at the museum, reverts to the high-strung frustration that worked so well in There's Something about Mary. But without the sexual stimulus -- this is a family picture -- he flails about for no reason. Elsewhere, Ricky Gervais and Steve Coogan, two supremely talented comedians, riff on their personas to no avail; it's a bit startling to see funny people be so profoundly unfunny. And Owen Wilson, repeating his gee-whiz Bottle Rocket act again, is palpably bored. Everyone is at a loss; with a script as lazy and dull as this one, it's no wonder the actors regress: they're working with the tools they've been given.
But no one is interested in supplying words -- Night at the Museum is about what we see. It's a special effects monster. The museum comes alive at night due to some hokum involving an ancient Egyptian curse; dinosaur bones stomp corridors, stuffed lions stalk the African wing, and mannequins of historical figures parade. And though the eye candy does provide a few creepily effective moments when the museum takes its first few breaths, goopy sentimentality awkwardly invades much of the film's second half. Night at the Museum is a rare movie that would have worked better without a plot. It's a hoot to see Stiller awing Attila the Hun with magic tricks while pilgrims, Victorians, and terra-cotta soldiers from the Han dynasty roam the background. Too bad he also has to learn about being a good father.
Commercials, by definition, lack art. They're quickies that work on sleight-of-hand and diversion. The ones we remember are simply zeitgeists, catchphrases that sneak into the lexicon. Successful movies -- those we remember -- are often art despite themselves. However banal they appear, there's talent somewhere beneath the junk. Night at the Museum is all junk; it'll disappear faster than the dude-you're-getting-a-Dell kid. Yo quiero my money back.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
The Pursuit of Happyness
(2006, USA. Directed by Gabriele Muccino.)
The latest weapon in the Right's war on all things decent is called The Pursuit of Happyness and it’s the enemy's sleekest rocket yet. Aimed at the heart and minds of a key Democratic constituency – African-Americans – it disguises racism under a sheen of cuddly traditionalism. "Pull yourself up by the bootstraps," it says. "No one's out to keep the black man down." Is this what they meant by compassionate conservatism?
Inspired by a true story, Happyness (not to be mistaken for the Todd Solondz movie) is a love letter to the yuppie in us all. It stars Will Smith as a brilliant but down-on-his-luck San Francisco worker bee; the kind of well-meaning guy with so much initiative he spends his life savings on a stock of futuristic x-ray machines, only to have them dismissed as unnecessary and useless by every hospital in the city. He plummets into poverty, and some of us might see his fall as a quintessential example of the American Dream gone bust.
The movie, however, says, "Just keep trying; this is America after all." One day, after losing yet another sale, Smith strolls by the Dean Witter headquarters and, in a burst of inspiration, his eyes turn to dollar signs. Ogling the sleek businessmen with their perfect hair, he intones in drowsy voiceover, "they look so happy." He wins a salary-free internship at the firm, and the rest of the movie chronicles Smith's attempts to keep he and his oh-so-adorable son afloat long enough to achieve a high-paying position and a six-figure bank account.
Set in the good old days of the early '80s, Happyness's corporate-friendly vibe is a bit of a shocker in the post-Enron era. Big business is portrayed as a cheery playground of toothy old white guys; James Karen, the diabolical real-estate developer who only moved the headstones in Poltergeist, plays a sagely Dean Witter higher-up – a Capitalist Yoda. When the city seizes $600 from Smith's bank account for unpaid parking tickets, our eyes are supposedly opened to the nefarious tricks of too much government. Smith ends up a tax-law advisor whose motto is, "We don't want anyone's hands in our pockets but our own." Too bad nobody told him about welfare earlier on.
Happyness's San Francisco setting is hardly a Manhattan-esque tribute; hippies are a thieving scourge of the streets and a day-care is run by lazy Asians whose curriculum includes screenings of "The Love Boat" and "Bonanza" – "For history," explains the pudgy teacher. (Apparently, Asians are too stupid to speak English: the movie gets its title from the name of the day-care – "There's no 'y' in 'happiness,'" educates Smith.)
But throughout, the film possesses an easily digestible visual vernacular. Beyond the regrettable shorthand of using a Rubik's Cube to demonstrate Smith's genius, Happyness's 1981 looks a lot like 1981 down to the ashtrays in the corporation's conference room. The hair, costumes, and props are shot in a muted, grainy palate that simulates the era nicely; it even looks like it was made in the Reagan-era. And, in a way, it's fun to watch – but not since The Cell has the disconnect between the merits of a movie's form and its content been so prominent.
This is the third week in a row that I'm calling out a movie for its underhanded Right-wing motives. I have just enough self-awareness to realize I might be coming off as a paranoid pinko, but Hilary Clinton may have been on to something. And the strangest part? Now they have Will Smith on their side. When a couple of guys who were up to no good started making trouble in Charles Bronson's neighborhood, he opened them up with a Magnum. Now-a-days, you move from Philadelphia to Bel Air, quit rapping, and make conservative fantasies about how the man isn't really trying to keep you down. Times have changed.
The latest weapon in the Right's war on all things decent is called The Pursuit of Happyness and it’s the enemy's sleekest rocket yet. Aimed at the heart and minds of a key Democratic constituency – African-Americans – it disguises racism under a sheen of cuddly traditionalism. "Pull yourself up by the bootstraps," it says. "No one's out to keep the black man down." Is this what they meant by compassionate conservatism?
Inspired by a true story, Happyness (not to be mistaken for the Todd Solondz movie) is a love letter to the yuppie in us all. It stars Will Smith as a brilliant but down-on-his-luck San Francisco worker bee; the kind of well-meaning guy with so much initiative he spends his life savings on a stock of futuristic x-ray machines, only to have them dismissed as unnecessary and useless by every hospital in the city. He plummets into poverty, and some of us might see his fall as a quintessential example of the American Dream gone bust.
The movie, however, says, "Just keep trying; this is America after all." One day, after losing yet another sale, Smith strolls by the Dean Witter headquarters and, in a burst of inspiration, his eyes turn to dollar signs. Ogling the sleek businessmen with their perfect hair, he intones in drowsy voiceover, "they look so happy." He wins a salary-free internship at the firm, and the rest of the movie chronicles Smith's attempts to keep he and his oh-so-adorable son afloat long enough to achieve a high-paying position and a six-figure bank account.
Set in the good old days of the early '80s, Happyness's corporate-friendly vibe is a bit of a shocker in the post-Enron era. Big business is portrayed as a cheery playground of toothy old white guys; James Karen, the diabolical real-estate developer who only moved the headstones in Poltergeist, plays a sagely Dean Witter higher-up – a Capitalist Yoda. When the city seizes $600 from Smith's bank account for unpaid parking tickets, our eyes are supposedly opened to the nefarious tricks of too much government. Smith ends up a tax-law advisor whose motto is, "We don't want anyone's hands in our pockets but our own." Too bad nobody told him about welfare earlier on.
Happyness's San Francisco setting is hardly a Manhattan-esque tribute; hippies are a thieving scourge of the streets and a day-care is run by lazy Asians whose curriculum includes screenings of "The Love Boat" and "Bonanza" – "For history," explains the pudgy teacher. (Apparently, Asians are too stupid to speak English: the movie gets its title from the name of the day-care – "There's no 'y' in 'happiness,'" educates Smith.)
But throughout, the film possesses an easily digestible visual vernacular. Beyond the regrettable shorthand of using a Rubik's Cube to demonstrate Smith's genius, Happyness's 1981 looks a lot like 1981 down to the ashtrays in the corporation's conference room. The hair, costumes, and props are shot in a muted, grainy palate that simulates the era nicely; it even looks like it was made in the Reagan-era. And, in a way, it's fun to watch – but not since The Cell has the disconnect between the merits of a movie's form and its content been so prominent.
This is the third week in a row that I'm calling out a movie for its underhanded Right-wing motives. I have just enough self-awareness to realize I might be coming off as a paranoid pinko, but Hilary Clinton may have been on to something. And the strangest part? Now they have Will Smith on their side. When a couple of guys who were up to no good started making trouble in Charles Bronson's neighborhood, he opened them up with a Magnum. Now-a-days, you move from Philadelphia to Bel Air, quit rapping, and make conservative fantasies about how the man isn't really trying to keep you down. Times have changed.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Apocalypto
(USA, 2006. Directed by Mel Gibson.)
Apocalypto is a strange movie. It has the sweep of an epic and the swagger of exploitation. It's both beautiful and ugly, captivating and repulsive. It's bipolar throughout, and if we didn't know who its director was, we might think him a bit nuts.
Apocalypto is a strange movie. It has the sweep of an epic and the swagger of exploitation. It's both beautiful and ugly, captivating and repulsive. It's bipolar throughout, and if we didn't know who its director was, we might think him a bit nuts.
But who's willing to take it? With a cast of non-professionals, subtitled dialogue, and a plot kept tightly under wraps, Apocalypto is a hard sell. Its one draw is Gibson. And though The Passion of the Christ was a mammoth hit, does anybody really want to see its follow-up? Did anyone enjoy that movie?
Apocalypto isn't for anybody – it's Gibson's party and no one else is invited. Working outside the studio system and playing with his own money, Gibson here establishes himself as our most rogue director. And like the work of Samuel Fuller or Russ Meyer, Gibson's film is distinctly his own. Beholden to no one – bosses or fans – he's allowed to get as crazy as he wants and indulge his weirdest obsessions. But Fuller's and Meyer's movies radiated a perverse joy – they teemed with the excitement of filmmaking and the (mostly sexual) fixations thrilled them, and in turn, us. Gibson however isn't having any fun, and if there's any reason he's making movies, it's to simulate pain – his obsession with the flesh is unmistakably Sadistic.
Apocalypto’s subject – Mayan human sacrifice – seems an odd choice for Gibson following The Passion’s success with the Christian community; why stray from what worked so well? But if the movie isn’t overtly religious, it isn’t because the director intended it as secular – Apocalypto is an unmistakable metaphor of the Second Coming. Instead, Gibson is making the kind of leaps that unhealthy artists can make when working at their least stable. In transporting his profoundly Biblical tale to
The word “apocalypto” means “I reveal” in Greek, and other than sounding vaguely Spanish, there’s no clear reason why it serves as the film’s title. Really, Gibson reveals too little and too much at the same time. And if Apocalypto fails as far Right-wing religious revisionism, it works as a portrait of creativity out of control, soaked in fake blood.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Turistas
(2006, USA. Directed by John Stockwell.)
Turista's tagline reads: "Go home." You might just want to stay home. It's a half-hearted retread of Hostel that mangles that film's insidious subtext - Turistas is everything Hostel was making fun of.
After a (confusing) bus accident leaves a rag-tag group of spring-breakers stranded in the leafy hills of the Brazilian countryside, sinister locals concoct an elaborate scheme that leaves our heroes without their passports or their intestines. But a lot of time passes between the loss of their possessions and the loss of their guts: the film rambles endlessly as the personality-free (but silicon-filled) Americans first party away in a sequence that looks like MTV's The Grind: The Movie and then roam the jungle as vultures caw overhead. Turistas is two-thirds complete when the blood starts to flow.
If Turistas had been made fifty years ago, it would have been set in outer space and been called "science fiction:" a group of astronauts lands on an exotic planet, roams the dusty craters, and gets kidnapped by nefarious aliens intent on discovering the intricacies of Earthling anatomy. But by relocating the action to
Horror films should be fun: something like a roller-coaster - we hang on for dear life as the movie tosses us this way and that, all the while holding up its end of the bargain: we won't be harmed. Somewhere along the way, horror films started to assault their audiences - sex and violence were conflated, we were told to keep our clothes on, and getting high could result in our deaths. But being scolded is a downer, and I'm not going to turn to Wes Craven for lessons on life. Hostel deftly turned the tables on this school of scares: it dressed our hero in the villain's garb, forced him to act as torturer, and asked, "Is this fun?" It sure wasn't. That the movie managed to remain a blast is a testament to its filmmaker's skill.
Turistas follows much of Hostel's plot, but like
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Deck the Halls
(2006, USA. Directed by John Whitesell.)
Matthew Broderick is a murderer. In 1987, he rammed his BMW into a car carrying a 63-year-old woman and her 30-year-old daughter while vacationing in Northern Ireland. Both women were killed, while Broderick – claiming to have no memory of the event – escaped with cuts and a broken thigh. He pled guilty to careless driving and was fined 100 pounds ($173.95). He didn't even show up to court.
So one can take some morbid glee in seeing him emasculated throughout Deck the Halls. Beyond that teeny pleasure, it takes the honor of Most Freudian Christmas Romp Ever. It's a trove of straight, masculine, sexual anxiety. If a dude has ever fretted about something, Deck the Halls has it covered.
'Twas a few nights before Christmas in Massachusetts – third highest population of Jews in the country – and Broderick was about to get it on with his wife, played by Kristin Davis. But just before he could seal the deal, squirrelly little Danny DeVito (playing the most Jewish Christian in the world) moved in next door.
A slimly car salesman with an inferiority complex, DeVito feels "invisible" – less than a man. He frets because his house is too small to see in Google Earth. (Broderick's shows up like a giant Washington Monument.) To compensate, he vows to do something "big, huge:" a home Christmas display visible from the Heavens. Thus begins a battle of size and showmanship between the neighbors.
Along the way, Broderick ogles DeVito's wife (whose giant rack is photographed like a barely-concealed Mt. Everest), is shamed by his neighbor's larger Christmas tree, and squeals "Who's your daddy?" at a suggestive holiday dance routine only to discover that the hooded quasi-stripper is, in fact, his daughter. "Oh my God," he realizes, "I'm your daddy!"
In one scene, Broderick falls into a frozen lake, passes out, and awakens to find himself laying naked while an equally raw DeVito gyrates at his side – "You were about to die of hypothermia," DeVito reassures.
Broderick gets freaked out by the cross-dressing town sheriff, the neighborhood makes fun of his snowman sweater (complete with a teeny protruding carrot nose), and the guy even drives a diminutive Volvo. What a fag.
Meanwhile, DeVito's display causes more angst. "It just keeps getting bigger and bigger," Broderick frets. He heads across the street with a pair of scissors. (The movie tells us that he intends to cut his neighbor's power.)
As the competition grows and envelops the guys' lives, their homesteads suffer. DeVito considers conceding victory by deconstructing his display, but his foxy wife warns, "You touch one bulb on this house and you'll see the last of my special holiday offers, if you know what I mean." And if anyone in the audience was still wondering, she whispers, "I think we both know that this is about more than just lights."
Maybe I was just bored. Nothing in Deck the Halls works. It's profoundly unfunny and a bore. Its climax, in which the town contributes to DeVito's non-functioning display by raising their cell phone LEDs to the sky, feels like a gooey Cingular commercial. And the money-shot involves Broderick's horny 10-year-old son inserting a forgotten plug into an outlet, setting off an orgasm of light that sends the town into frenzy of pleasure: a load under every tree, I guess.
If anything, Deck the Halls is only a brisk 95 minutes long – reminding us that, in the end, size does matter.
Matthew Broderick is a murderer. In 1987, he rammed his BMW into a car carrying a 63-year-old woman and her 30-year-old daughter while vacationing in Northern Ireland. Both women were killed, while Broderick – claiming to have no memory of the event – escaped with cuts and a broken thigh. He pled guilty to careless driving and was fined 100 pounds ($173.95). He didn't even show up to court.
So one can take some morbid glee in seeing him emasculated throughout Deck the Halls. Beyond that teeny pleasure, it takes the honor of Most Freudian Christmas Romp Ever. It's a trove of straight, masculine, sexual anxiety. If a dude has ever fretted about something, Deck the Halls has it covered.
'Twas a few nights before Christmas in Massachusetts – third highest population of Jews in the country – and Broderick was about to get it on with his wife, played by Kristin Davis. But just before he could seal the deal, squirrelly little Danny DeVito (playing the most Jewish Christian in the world) moved in next door.
A slimly car salesman with an inferiority complex, DeVito feels "invisible" – less than a man. He frets because his house is too small to see in Google Earth. (Broderick's shows up like a giant Washington Monument.) To compensate, he vows to do something "big, huge:" a home Christmas display visible from the Heavens. Thus begins a battle of size and showmanship between the neighbors.
Along the way, Broderick ogles DeVito's wife (whose giant rack is photographed like a barely-concealed Mt. Everest), is shamed by his neighbor's larger Christmas tree, and squeals "Who's your daddy?" at a suggestive holiday dance routine only to discover that the hooded quasi-stripper is, in fact, his daughter. "Oh my God," he realizes, "I'm your daddy!"
In one scene, Broderick falls into a frozen lake, passes out, and awakens to find himself laying naked while an equally raw DeVito gyrates at his side – "You were about to die of hypothermia," DeVito reassures.
Broderick gets freaked out by the cross-dressing town sheriff, the neighborhood makes fun of his snowman sweater (complete with a teeny protruding carrot nose), and the guy even drives a diminutive Volvo. What a fag.
Meanwhile, DeVito's display causes more angst. "It just keeps getting bigger and bigger," Broderick frets. He heads across the street with a pair of scissors. (The movie tells us that he intends to cut his neighbor's power.)
As the competition grows and envelops the guys' lives, their homesteads suffer. DeVito considers conceding victory by deconstructing his display, but his foxy wife warns, "You touch one bulb on this house and you'll see the last of my special holiday offers, if you know what I mean." And if anyone in the audience was still wondering, she whispers, "I think we both know that this is about more than just lights."
Maybe I was just bored. Nothing in Deck the Halls works. It's profoundly unfunny and a bore. Its climax, in which the town contributes to DeVito's non-functioning display by raising their cell phone LEDs to the sky, feels like a gooey Cingular commercial. And the money-shot involves Broderick's horny 10-year-old son inserting a forgotten plug into an outlet, setting off an orgasm of light that sends the town into frenzy of pleasure: a load under every tree, I guess.
If anything, Deck the Halls is only a brisk 95 minutes long – reminding us that, in the end, size does matter.
Remembering Robert Altman
Robert Altman died last Tuesday. When I first heard the news, I didn't know how to react. I actually started to cry. But then, deciding that a bit incongruous, started to call people.
I hadn't felt this way about a celebrity's passing since Frank Sinatra died in 1998 – an occasion I marked by wearing all black to my middle school. Both Sinatra and Altman were American icons and both had a profound influence on me: they changed my idea of what art could do.
I often cite The Long Goodbye as one of my favorite movies. In many ways, it might be Altman's most trivial work from a spurt of creative brilliance that spawned MASH, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and Nashville. But it's a breezy little masterpiece that hits like a fastball out of nowhere.
The film transplants Raymond Chandler's private detective Phillip Marlowe from the 1930s to a post-Vietnam Los Angles of self-help gurus, yoga, and a perpetually sunny, carefree freedom. Marlowe doesn't fit and Elliot Gould plays the gumshoe as a bumbling buffoon dumbstruck by the inanity around him.
(I'll always remember seeing The Long Goodbye for the first time and spending the following hours muttering to myself like Gould does – the movie hypnotized me.)
That Altman also finds room in the film for a crackerjack mystery and a sucker-punch of an ending is a testament to his off-the-cuff brilliance. His camera never settles down – there isn't a static shot in the film – and neither does the viewer's pulse. It's a movie full of life.
Nashville, on the other hand, is Altman's best movie. It's long, wide open, cluttered, and chaotic, and it just may be the Great American Movie. The film theorist Andre Bazin once said that film is the ultimate art: the zenith of media. If that's true, than Nashville is a prime example; it's everything American art was working towards: the culmination of country music, the sprawling canvases of the Hudson River School, and the agitated anarchy of Jackson Pollack – all set to the pulsating rhythm of the Beats.
The first time I saw it, I didn't know what to think – I knew I was watching something important, but I can't say I got it. Now, all these years later, I've seen it countless times and still don’t quite know what it is. It's a towering work, to be sure, but the experience of watching Nashville is maybe inexpressible. As a film critic, it's my job to get around that, to distill what a movie is and respond to whatever it's saying. But Nashville keeps returning as a road-block – what is it? What am I missing? Maybe I was born too late; I envy those who saw it in its initial run. But it still affects me deeply – I just don't know what it's up to. I'll have to see it again.
When A Prairie Home Companion was released earlier this year, one critic noted the odd paring of Altman and writer Garrison Keillor: they're both from the Midwest, the critic said, but Keillor hails from the quiet hills of Minnesota while Altman's hometown is the wilder Kansas City. Altman was a maverick, a cowboy. Reading that made me proud to be from the same state.
After hearing of Altman's death and picking up my phone, I reached an old friend from film school. She still hadn't heard the news and started to get a little upset. But then we recalled the first Altman films we had seen (hers was Short Cuts, mine Nashville) and we calmed down a bit. Our little ceremony was helpful – we wouldn't spend the rest of the day crying or wondering what to do. We decided to re-watch our initial encounters with the Great American Filmmaker again that night and to remember just how much we loved him.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Let's Go to Prison
(2006, USA. Directed by Bob Odenkirk.)
The first rule behind bars, Let's Go to Prison tells us, is “never trust anybody.” It's good advice I'm sure; even without “Oz,” I think most of us know that prison is a scary place. With white supremacists to the left and shower rapists to the right, I'd rather walk Death Row than do serious time on Cell Bloc D.
The first rule behind bars, Let's Go to Prison tells us, is “never trust anybody.” It's good advice I'm sure; even without “Oz,” I think most of us know that prison is a scary place. With white supremacists to the left and shower rapists to the right, I'd rather walk Death Row than do serious time on Cell Bloc D.
But if, knock on wood, I ever get locked up, I'd hunt down a copy of Jim Hogshire's book You Are Going to Prison. It's a brutal, no-nonsense survival manual that guides the reader through eight to ten years of maximum-security hell. (Chapter titles include “Don't Drop the Soap - Sex in the Slammer” and “Blood In and Blood Out - Prison Gangs and Violence.”)
Unfortunately, You Are Going to Prison is out of print, and I doubt its film adaptation, Let's Go to Prison, is going to help anyone facing a stint at Sing Sing. For the rest of us, it's a hoot.
The new title sounds like a forgotten Hope and Crosby vehicle, but the movie's tone is more like Mean Girls for convicts. After a guide through the cafeteria and its cliques (Queens over there, Nazis in the back), one character asks about the menu. The surly cook points to one steaming pile, “That's meat,” and then to another, “That ain't meat.” I'd rather have the Salisbury steak.
Mean Girls was also based on a non-fiction social study: Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence. That book's tone suited the film adaptation nicely - light comedy and high school make the cutest couple. But prison and screwball aren't a perfect match and the film brawls with itself: penal-system critique vs. absurdist farce.
Let's Go to Prison is a tale of unrequited revenge. Dax Shepard plays John Lyshitski (“Same Lyshitski; different day.”), a self-described career criminal who first did time at age 8. It was a petty crime: he stole a Publishers Clearing House van, but got caught when he tried to cash the giant check. (In a scene reminiscent of Take the Money and Run, he tries to squeeze the massive note through the bank teller's slot.) A nasty and arbitrary judge cruelly sentenced the boy, who turned to a life of crime and appeared before the same justice following each botched robbery. Lyshitski's hatred grew and when the film begins, he fresh out of jail and ready to hunt down the man who ruined his life. The judge, however, has recently passed; but Lyshitski needs an outlet for his rage and frames the judge's arrogant, clownish son, played by Will Arnett of “Arrested Development.” Still unfulfilled, Lyshitski gets himself thrown in prison and vows to make life hell for his enemy's offspring.
It's a high-concept comedy - an improbable narrative that Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis might have once been shoehorned into. We're never quite sure whose side we're on and a third-act twist derails much of the fun. But Let's Go to Prison is for the most part a madcap riot that, when it stays focused, is genuinely hilarious. There's a ghastly $7,000,000 Yoko Ono sculpture (a metallic “YES” crushing a diminutive “NO”), a courtroom defense based upon Jurassic Park, and an interpretive dance reading of Technotronic's “Move This.” Arnett ends a letter to his pre-teen pen pal with, “I'll have to sign off now: someone is pissing on me.” Bob Odenkirk directs the film with the same ironic detachment that defined his “Mr. Show” series, and it's nice to see that show's mentality presented without a laugh track.
But the source material's presence remains. When we arrive at the prison, Shepard reveals in voice-over the burden our penal-system places on taxpayers, “…that's 75 million dollars a day, that's 28 billion dollars a year. When you think about it, it might just be cheaper to let us keep your goddamn car stereos.” Later, he tells us, “20% of US prisoners aren't even American citizens.”
The fun grinds to a halt whenever the torture of prison life is conveyed. In a particularly scary passage, Arnett spends two days in “the hole” hallucinating. There's a battle fought with hypodermic needles filled with deadly “boat cleaner.” An initially amusing scene spent in a jail cell/love den turns frightening when one character warns, “If you ever lie to me again, I'll remove your gentiles and put them in a shoebox.” And I've never seen another screwball comedy that drives its protagonist to the brink of suicide.
Comedies with a sense of social commitment are rare and risky, and it's the ones that lack self-importance that excel. Duck Soup, one of the great comedies, concealed a roaring anti-war yell underneath the slapstick chaos, clocking in at just 68 minutes. And though Let's Go to Prison is a toady in the Marx Brothers syndicate, its 84 minutes are unobtrusive and light - the flashes of violence and statistics feel more like missteps than pre-meditated blunders.
Harsh Times
(2005, USA. Directed by David Ayer.)
In the new film Harsh Times, Christian Bale masters a trick few other actors possess: he's better than the film he's in. He flies through the boundaries of the screenplay, finding subtle nuances in his character that the writer doesn't have the time or talent to notice. Written and directed by first-timer David Ayer, the film is a mess: it's a bloated conflation of South Central LA street posturing and clumsy social commentary. But Bale brings the movie a certain technical gloss, like the role is a class requirement. It's a joy to watch him practice his craft.
In the new film Harsh Times, Christian Bale masters a trick few other actors possess: he's better than the film he's in. He flies through the boundaries of the screenplay, finding subtle nuances in his character that the writer doesn't have the time or talent to notice. Written and directed by first-timer David Ayer, the film is a mess: it's a bloated conflation of South Central LA street posturing and clumsy social commentary. But Bale brings the movie a certain technical gloss, like the role is a class requirement. It's a joy to watch him practice his craft.
Though he's been around since 1987's Empire of the Sun, Christian Bale still feels like a young talent - someone with potential. He's the same age as Leonardo DiCaprio and Chloë Sevigny; but unlike the other actors of his generation, we know little about his private life. He isn't reclusive, but rather a professional. Like DiCaprio, Bale appears with a new accent for each of his roles; but with Bale that trick never appears showy: it's almost like Bale's looking for something to keep him interested and awake. And so his appearance in Harsh Times is a bit beguiling: what is he doing in a film so undeserving of his talent?
Harsh Times spends a few days with Jim Davis (Bale). Just off a tour of duty in Iraq, Jim is plagued by nightmares and flashbacks. He returns home to LA with the singular goal of procuring a job that will secure his Mexican girlfriend's US citizenship, all the while letting his insanity simmer under the surface. It's a flimsy premise that doesn't make for much compelling narrative action. The bulk of the film, in fact, is spent following Jim and his buddy, played by "Six Feet Under" actor Freddy Rodriguez, as they drive around LA half-heartedly looking for jobs. Without much drive or thrust, the pacing falters and Harsh Times becomes a bore.
Harsh Times doesn't seem to have much need for plot; it's a character study, but one in which the psychological undertones are telegraphed a mile away. Characters talk endlessly of Jim's lunacy, referring to his violent past and muttering to one another, "That guy's crazy." When we get to the root of Jim's nuttiness, the explanation is laid out for us like a battle plan: "Dude, you should sue the military or something," one character says to him. Another guy, standing close by, says, "He's right," as if speaking directly to us. And if the title's purpose still escapes anyone in the audience, Jim is offered a job in the Department of Homeland Security.
Without any sense of humor or narrative cohesion, Harsh Times leads to a spectacularly violent conclusion shot like an outtake from The Matrix. Though it doesn't fit with the rest of the film's tone, it does fall right into the amateurishness preceding it. It all looks like a Tony Scott knockoff: quick cuts, filters, and affectation. The social commentary is laughably obvious and the whole thing feels a bit unnecessary.
Monday, November 13, 2006
A Good Year
(2006, UK. Directed by Ridley Scott.)
The last time we heard from Russell Crowe he was lobbing phones at terrified desk clerks. I think we always knew he was a bit of an animal – most of us first saw him as thug cop Bud White in LA Confidential after all – but after the incident at the hotel, it was like the beast had been uncaged. "Unleash hell," he ordered in Gladiator – was that a warning? I'm nervous for the next guy who has to regretfully inform him that he'll only be getting a queen-size, or that they're out of the fish.
Meanwhile, Ridley Scott has been a bit quiet recently. A director with a Midas touch, his billion-dollar epic Kingdom of Heaven thudded at the box-office and failed to register a single nod from the Academy; his streak had been broken. After an impressive string of hits – Thelma and Louise, GI Jane, and Hannibal – it was almost like Cleopatra all over again: too much money, too little talent. Honestly, I've never been much of a fan. Even his best film, Blade Runner, falls far short of masterpiece status and the he's a producer's pet – the most commercial and safe director around. The director William Friedkin once said, "If it's a film by somebody instead for somebody, I smell art." Scott has followed that sentiment like a mantra.
Now A Good Year has tiptoed into theaters, and it strikes me as odd that the new Russell Crowe/Ridley Scott film wasn't announced with a ticker-tape parade. These were the guys who made Gladiator after all. I hadn't even heard of the movie until it was assigned to me. But after seeing it, I understand the lack of fanfare: A Good Year is supposed to be an insinuation. It's supposed to impart Crowe's likeability and Scott's skill in a whisper. It tries its best to hint and skirt the issue – that Russell Crowe is a dick and Ridley Scott is a hack – but I wasn't fooled and I doubt anyone was. It's a dud of a comeback; one whose quiet release signals more resignation than charm.
In the film, Crowe plays a bulldog of a stockbroker whose personality is drawn with such broad brushstrokes that the character's tenacity is almost cartoonish. (He calls his employees "lab rats.") He's a workhorse and a hound who fills the room with bravado and swagger. Women in his wake whisper to one another, "He's so adorable." He stages acrobatic economic stunts with his country's market that the SCC would deem illegal; the film supposes them incorrigible. In short, he's a lot like Crowe's real-life persona: he's a jerk but Hollywood keeps insisting that he's a rake.
When his uncle dies, Crowe inherits a Chateau in the south of France. The acquisition is telegraphed as an opportunity for the character to lighten up. To slow down and realize the "simple pleasures of life." Really, I didn't see much point – there wasn't much sweetness buried underneath the bluster to begin with. This guy's beyond redemption. But the movie's purpose is clear and it tries a long 118 minutes to insist that Russell Crowe is really a sweetheart. By the end, he's just a dick with a new house.
The film's flimsy screenplay doesn't help much. After Sideways, the wine metaphors feel limp and the insistence on whimsy is forced – the movie's first words read, "A few vintages ago." Albert Finney plays the uncle in flashbacks and he's a like a drunken Confucius spouting such clumsy idioms as, "A man should acknowledge his losses just as gracefully as he celebrates his winnings." And sure, SMART cars look funny, but Woody Allen looked a lot funnier driving one in Scoop than Russell Crowe does here.
Really, the brunt of the blame should be on Scott, who films much of this apparently light, frothy comedy like he's shooting one of Black Hawk Down's gunfights. The average shot length hovers around the two-second mark, jarring much of the relaxed tone; a slapstick-infused tennis match, for example, feels like Hector and Achilles throwing down at Troy. Or more accurately, it looks like that battle shot as a fashion commercial. Scott began his career filming advertisements and he's never shed the urge to cut his films quickly and to telegraph mood shorthand: London is shot with a blue filter and the south of France is all yellows. It's when the film slows down and Scott's presence slips away that it achieves a sort of innocuous charm – like eating at Macaroni Grill; a theme-park version of the real thing.
A supposed feast for the senses, A Good Year is fake through and through, a sham. It's a problem when a film rests on Russell Crowe's good-natured charisma. He doesn't have any. And though the movies tries its hardest to thrust at us the image of Crowe as lovable oaf, I can smell what it's really flinging. Duck.
The last time we heard from Russell Crowe he was lobbing phones at terrified desk clerks. I think we always knew he was a bit of an animal – most of us first saw him as thug cop Bud White in LA Confidential after all – but after the incident at the hotel, it was like the beast had been uncaged. "Unleash hell," he ordered in Gladiator – was that a warning? I'm nervous for the next guy who has to regretfully inform him that he'll only be getting a queen-size, or that they're out of the fish.
Meanwhile, Ridley Scott has been a bit quiet recently. A director with a Midas touch, his billion-dollar epic Kingdom of Heaven thudded at the box-office and failed to register a single nod from the Academy; his streak had been broken. After an impressive string of hits – Thelma and Louise, GI Jane, and Hannibal – it was almost like Cleopatra all over again: too much money, too little talent. Honestly, I've never been much of a fan. Even his best film, Blade Runner, falls far short of masterpiece status and the he's a producer's pet – the most commercial and safe director around. The director William Friedkin once said, "If it's a film by somebody instead for somebody, I smell art." Scott has followed that sentiment like a mantra.
Now A Good Year has tiptoed into theaters, and it strikes me as odd that the new Russell Crowe/Ridley Scott film wasn't announced with a ticker-tape parade. These were the guys who made Gladiator after all. I hadn't even heard of the movie until it was assigned to me. But after seeing it, I understand the lack of fanfare: A Good Year is supposed to be an insinuation. It's supposed to impart Crowe's likeability and Scott's skill in a whisper. It tries its best to hint and skirt the issue – that Russell Crowe is a dick and Ridley Scott is a hack – but I wasn't fooled and I doubt anyone was. It's a dud of a comeback; one whose quiet release signals more resignation than charm.
In the film, Crowe plays a bulldog of a stockbroker whose personality is drawn with such broad brushstrokes that the character's tenacity is almost cartoonish. (He calls his employees "lab rats.") He's a workhorse and a hound who fills the room with bravado and swagger. Women in his wake whisper to one another, "He's so adorable." He stages acrobatic economic stunts with his country's market that the SCC would deem illegal; the film supposes them incorrigible. In short, he's a lot like Crowe's real-life persona: he's a jerk but Hollywood keeps insisting that he's a rake.
When his uncle dies, Crowe inherits a Chateau in the south of France. The acquisition is telegraphed as an opportunity for the character to lighten up. To slow down and realize the "simple pleasures of life." Really, I didn't see much point – there wasn't much sweetness buried underneath the bluster to begin with. This guy's beyond redemption. But the movie's purpose is clear and it tries a long 118 minutes to insist that Russell Crowe is really a sweetheart. By the end, he's just a dick with a new house.
The film's flimsy screenplay doesn't help much. After Sideways, the wine metaphors feel limp and the insistence on whimsy is forced – the movie's first words read, "A few vintages ago." Albert Finney plays the uncle in flashbacks and he's a like a drunken Confucius spouting such clumsy idioms as, "A man should acknowledge his losses just as gracefully as he celebrates his winnings." And sure, SMART cars look funny, but Woody Allen looked a lot funnier driving one in Scoop than Russell Crowe does here.
Really, the brunt of the blame should be on Scott, who films much of this apparently light, frothy comedy like he's shooting one of Black Hawk Down's gunfights. The average shot length hovers around the two-second mark, jarring much of the relaxed tone; a slapstick-infused tennis match, for example, feels like Hector and Achilles throwing down at Troy. Or more accurately, it looks like that battle shot as a fashion commercial. Scott began his career filming advertisements and he's never shed the urge to cut his films quickly and to telegraph mood shorthand: London is shot with a blue filter and the south of France is all yellows. It's when the film slows down and Scott's presence slips away that it achieves a sort of innocuous charm – like eating at Macaroni Grill; a theme-park version of the real thing.
A supposed feast for the senses, A Good Year is fake through and through, a sham. It's a problem when a film rests on Russell Crowe's good-natured charisma. He doesn't have any. And though the movies tries its hardest to thrust at us the image of Crowe as lovable oaf, I can smell what it's really flinging. Duck.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
Borat!: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
(2006, USA. Directed by Larry Charles.)
Some of you may be asking who or what is a "Borat." It's a difficult question to answer. For one, he is a Kazakh television reporter who manages to be both charmingly naive and offensively bigoted. He both interviews and is interviewed. His appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart are treats. For all intents and purposes, he is a real person. But that's an easy mistake to make. In the real world he is a character dreamed up by mad-genius comic Sacha Baron Cohen, a kind of modern day Peter Sellers. Cohen, a Brit, hosted Da Ali G Show first on Channel 4 and then on HBO from 2000 to 2004. The show was a madcap treasure whose three creations – Ali G, an awkward hip-hop poseur, Bruno, a flamboyantly homosexual male model, and the aforementioned Borat – paraded through polite society, bulldozing the egos of unwitting idiots. (One memorable sketch had Bruno prodding a cabal of moronic frat dudes to suggestively pose for the camera and then thanking them for appearing on Gay TV.) Shot verité style, it was Candid Camera for intellectual bullies. And while it was often nearly brilliant, there was always something scary about Cohen's ruthlessness. He wasn't drawing political cartoons or doing impressions – these were real people Cohen was deceiving. It was satire at its most savage.
The Borat character, with his genuine sweetness and vulnerable curiosity, was his best. He was a guileless pursuer of advice on etiquette whose victims spoke to him as if he were a three-year-old. And though Borat's cartoonish anti-Semitism always complicated the proceedings, these morons were doing their best to help – a bit of humanity seemed to sneak in. Still, could you really trust him?
And so it's no wonder Cohen's first starring vehicle centers on Borat. The movie is called Borat!: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and it's one word short of holding the dubious honor of longest movie title ever, currently held by Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. And like that film's star, Borat! effectively plays more than one role. We're told the film is a travelogue: Borat's journey across the "U,S, and A…the greatest country in the world." In a series of sketches, Borat takes driving lessons, interviews a feminist group, takes a class on humor, and learns proper table manners. It's reminiscent of the television series; but this is a movie after all, and with the demand for more plot comes the second story: the making of Borat!: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. We see Borat watching television, dressing for an interview, and squabbling with his producer (he'll yell "cut," for instance, but the camera keeps rolling).
The film's breezy spirit and the character's charisma keep things moving, but they can't keep the seams hidden: we're always aware of Cohen's presence and where his sympathies lie: a good natured chat about fashion with a few gangstas is followed by an upper-class dinner party where Borat excuses himself from the table only to return moments later to present the host with a bag of his own excrement. That's not to say Southern racists don't deserve our contempt, but when Cohen literally destroys an antique store adorned with Confederate flags, the whole thing feels a bit mean. These aren't actors.
It's when Cohen steps back and let's his subjects incriminate themselves that the film takes off and achieves a frightening hilarity. In Borat!'s best scene, an Evangelical freak-out that feels like frenzied Todd Solondz, Borat doesn't say a word. All he has to do is show up at a Texas rodeo for all hell to break loose. No one told the frat guy to ask if women in Russia are slaves. But when Borat believes a family of Jews has turned into cockroaches and tries to ward them off with twenties, who's really at the butt of the joke?
The central conflict in Borat! is the character himself. Is he the joke or is he a conduit to the jokers? There's no doubt that Cohen is funny, but he's a bully too.
At my screening of Borat!, I had to present my ID before I was let into the auditorium – the Warren wanted to make sure I was old enough to see it. The kid in front of me asked the ticket-taker, "Is the movie that bad?" I didn't think so: swearing was kept to a minimum, there was no outrageous violence, and the only nudity involved a glimpse of a penis. Maybe the Warren didn't want teenagers getting the wrong idea. Frankly, I didn't get any ideas at all; I still don't know what Cohen is up to, and I still don't really trust him.
His accent, though, is hilarious.
This review originally appeared in Wichita City Paper on November 9, 2006.
Some of you may be asking who or what is a "Borat." It's a difficult question to answer. For one, he is a Kazakh television reporter who manages to be both charmingly naive and offensively bigoted. He both interviews and is interviewed. His appearances on Late Night with David Letterman and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart are treats. For all intents and purposes, he is a real person. But that's an easy mistake to make. In the real world he is a character dreamed up by mad-genius comic Sacha Baron Cohen, a kind of modern day Peter Sellers. Cohen, a Brit, hosted Da Ali G Show first on Channel 4 and then on HBO from 2000 to 2004. The show was a madcap treasure whose three creations – Ali G, an awkward hip-hop poseur, Bruno, a flamboyantly homosexual male model, and the aforementioned Borat – paraded through polite society, bulldozing the egos of unwitting idiots. (One memorable sketch had Bruno prodding a cabal of moronic frat dudes to suggestively pose for the camera and then thanking them for appearing on Gay TV.) Shot verité style, it was Candid Camera for intellectual bullies. And while it was often nearly brilliant, there was always something scary about Cohen's ruthlessness. He wasn't drawing political cartoons or doing impressions – these were real people Cohen was deceiving. It was satire at its most savage.
The Borat character, with his genuine sweetness and vulnerable curiosity, was his best. He was a guileless pursuer of advice on etiquette whose victims spoke to him as if he were a three-year-old. And though Borat's cartoonish anti-Semitism always complicated the proceedings, these morons were doing their best to help – a bit of humanity seemed to sneak in. Still, could you really trust him?
And so it's no wonder Cohen's first starring vehicle centers on Borat. The movie is called Borat!: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan and it's one word short of holding the dubious honor of longest movie title ever, currently held by Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. And like that film's star, Borat! effectively plays more than one role. We're told the film is a travelogue: Borat's journey across the "U,S, and A…the greatest country in the world." In a series of sketches, Borat takes driving lessons, interviews a feminist group, takes a class on humor, and learns proper table manners. It's reminiscent of the television series; but this is a movie after all, and with the demand for more plot comes the second story: the making of Borat!: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. We see Borat watching television, dressing for an interview, and squabbling with his producer (he'll yell "cut," for instance, but the camera keeps rolling).
The film's breezy spirit and the character's charisma keep things moving, but they can't keep the seams hidden: we're always aware of Cohen's presence and where his sympathies lie: a good natured chat about fashion with a few gangstas is followed by an upper-class dinner party where Borat excuses himself from the table only to return moments later to present the host with a bag of his own excrement. That's not to say Southern racists don't deserve our contempt, but when Cohen literally destroys an antique store adorned with Confederate flags, the whole thing feels a bit mean. These aren't actors.
It's when Cohen steps back and let's his subjects incriminate themselves that the film takes off and achieves a frightening hilarity. In Borat!'s best scene, an Evangelical freak-out that feels like frenzied Todd Solondz, Borat doesn't say a word. All he has to do is show up at a Texas rodeo for all hell to break loose. No one told the frat guy to ask if women in Russia are slaves. But when Borat believes a family of Jews has turned into cockroaches and tries to ward them off with twenties, who's really at the butt of the joke?
The central conflict in Borat! is the character himself. Is he the joke or is he a conduit to the jokers? There's no doubt that Cohen is funny, but he's a bully too.
At my screening of Borat!, I had to present my ID before I was let into the auditorium – the Warren wanted to make sure I was old enough to see it. The kid in front of me asked the ticket-taker, "Is the movie that bad?" I didn't think so: swearing was kept to a minimum, there was no outrageous violence, and the only nudity involved a glimpse of a penis. Maybe the Warren didn't want teenagers getting the wrong idea. Frankly, I didn't get any ideas at all; I still don't know what Cohen is up to, and I still don't really trust him.
His accent, though, is hilarious.
This review originally appeared in Wichita City Paper on November 9, 2006.
La Commune (Paris, 1871) (DVD review)
(2000, France. Directed by Peter Watkins.)
La Commune (Paris, 1871) has a structure as ingeniously revolutionary as the real uprising it documents. In the film's opening moments, we are introduced to the actors and given a tour of the set. History is laid out through inter-titles and the participants intone their role in the proceedings. This is all fake, we are told. The movie has nothing up its sleeve. But this nearly six-hour documentary on the bloody 1871 socialist uprising in Paris's 11th district is more captivating, engrossing, and moving than anything Ron Howard could dream up for Miramax. With it's rickety set and costumed players, the movie is staged like Dogville, and its look is something like 19th century portraits come alive. In tone, though, it's closest link may be Studs Turkel on the verge of a nervous breakdown. As we roam the frenzied backlot, two rival TV networks vie for our attention: the bourgeois "National TV Versailles" and the proletariat "Commune TV." But the anachronism of 1870s television is never intrusive – this is all fake after all. And if the actors pause for a moment to debate contemporary political science, well, this isn't the real world. What it is is a call-to-arms, a challenge to our imbedded reporters in "Gucci camouflage" and to the way we watch 24-hour cable news networks. (Why do reporters have to look at the camera? Does that mean they're talking to us? It that journalistic honesty?) It's a big, bad, mean movie – something that doesn't come along all that often. And if it's length and content seem a bit confrontational, you're right – La Commune isn't hiding a thing.
This review orginally appeared in Wichita City Paper on November 9, 2006.
La Commune (Paris, 1871) has a structure as ingeniously revolutionary as the real uprising it documents. In the film's opening moments, we are introduced to the actors and given a tour of the set. History is laid out through inter-titles and the participants intone their role in the proceedings. This is all fake, we are told. The movie has nothing up its sleeve. But this nearly six-hour documentary on the bloody 1871 socialist uprising in Paris's 11th district is more captivating, engrossing, and moving than anything Ron Howard could dream up for Miramax. With it's rickety set and costumed players, the movie is staged like Dogville, and its look is something like 19th century portraits come alive. In tone, though, it's closest link may be Studs Turkel on the verge of a nervous breakdown. As we roam the frenzied backlot, two rival TV networks vie for our attention: the bourgeois "National TV Versailles" and the proletariat "Commune TV." But the anachronism of 1870s television is never intrusive – this is all fake after all. And if the actors pause for a moment to debate contemporary political science, well, this isn't the real world. What it is is a call-to-arms, a challenge to our imbedded reporters in "Gucci camouflage" and to the way we watch 24-hour cable news networks. (Why do reporters have to look at the camera? Does that mean they're talking to us? It that journalistic honesty?) It's a big, bad, mean movie – something that doesn't come along all that often. And if it's length and content seem a bit confrontational, you're right – La Commune isn't hiding a thing.
This review orginally appeared in Wichita City Paper on November 9, 2006.
Jigoku (DVD review)
(1960, Japan. Directed by Nobuo Nakagawa.)
Watching Jigoku is sort of like experiencing its protagonist's odyssey: while it's a lot less painful, its just as mindbending. The film, just released by the Criterion Collection on a gorgeous-looking DVD, is a guide through Hell (which, incidentally, is the title's English translation). It's a journey many still-breathing audiences are familiar with: either we've read Dante, know the story of Orpheus, or have seen Deconstructing Harry. But as wildly varying those works are in their depiction of the underworld, none will prepare you for Jigoku's twisted nightmare. One wonders where the hell Criterion found this damned thing.
Produced by Shintoho Studios, Japan's version of the rickety production houses that spawned Roger Corman and William Castle's schlockfests, Jigoku is a 1960's trash time warp. Taking its visual cues from the 1920's Euro-Guro-Nansensu (Erotic-Grotesque-Nonsense) artistic movement, the film chronicles an everyman's fall from bright young thing to pale sufferer of eternal torment - in style. It's the most mod descent into the maelstrom ever made.
And it's so viciously steeped in its own culture that it just maybe the most foreign film you'll ever see. Western audiences are likely to miss Jigoku's references to kaidan-geki, Amitabha's 19th Vow, or Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's ykiyo-e illustrations. A section of the underworld devoted to water thieves, for instance, will mystify those unfamiliar with Genshin's Ojoyoshu.
But it's funny too - while Christianity has a tendency towards the sensational, seeing those aspects culled from the more serene Buddhist religion is a shock, and the movie's off-the-wall zaniness is a treat for the more adventurous.
Light-years removed from the techno-centric J-horrors of today, Jigoku is an out-of-this-world fusion of Medieval Japanese gothic and an acid freak-out: fire-and-brimstone Buddhism at the disco. It's a trip.
This review originally appeared in Wichita City Paper on November 2, 2006.
Watching Jigoku is sort of like experiencing its protagonist's odyssey: while it's a lot less painful, its just as mindbending. The film, just released by the Criterion Collection on a gorgeous-looking DVD, is a guide through Hell (which, incidentally, is the title's English translation). It's a journey many still-breathing audiences are familiar with: either we've read Dante, know the story of Orpheus, or have seen Deconstructing Harry. But as wildly varying those works are in their depiction of the underworld, none will prepare you for Jigoku's twisted nightmare. One wonders where the hell Criterion found this damned thing.
Produced by Shintoho Studios, Japan's version of the rickety production houses that spawned Roger Corman and William Castle's schlockfests, Jigoku is a 1960's trash time warp. Taking its visual cues from the 1920's Euro-Guro-Nansensu (Erotic-Grotesque-Nonsense) artistic movement, the film chronicles an everyman's fall from bright young thing to pale sufferer of eternal torment - in style. It's the most mod descent into the maelstrom ever made.
And it's so viciously steeped in its own culture that it just maybe the most foreign film you'll ever see. Western audiences are likely to miss Jigoku's references to kaidan-geki, Amitabha's 19th Vow, or Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's ykiyo-e illustrations. A section of the underworld devoted to water thieves, for instance, will mystify those unfamiliar with Genshin's Ojoyoshu.
But it's funny too - while Christianity has a tendency towards the sensational, seeing those aspects culled from the more serene Buddhist religion is a shock, and the movie's off-the-wall zaniness is a treat for the more adventurous.
Light-years removed from the techno-centric J-horrors of today, Jigoku is an out-of-this-world fusion of Medieval Japanese gothic and an acid freak-out: fire-and-brimstone Buddhism at the disco. It's a trip.
This review originally appeared in Wichita City Paper on November 2, 2006.
Flags of Our Fathers
(2006, USA. Directed by Clint Eastwood.)
Clint Eastwood has never been an artist. He never was a craftsman either. Like the rough-and-tumble characters he used to play, Eastwood is a professional: someone who goes in and gets the job done. Grace has never been part of his arsenal; he prefers a Magnum.
But that Magnum has always been well aimed, whether at a hippie's forehead or an audience's gut. As a director, Eastwood has created a niche for himself as a decent filmmaker. That's not to say that he's very good: his films tend to feel clumsy and never make much of an impression. But he's never showy, and audiences have responded to his low-profile approach. Eastwood's last two films, Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby, managed the near-impossible feat of being maudlin without feeling overwrought - low-key ham. And though awards were heaped upon the films like mashed potatoes, I couldn't help but feel duped: ham should taste like ham, and cheese should taste like cheese.
Flags of Our Fathers is a stylistic departure for Eastwood. Shot in the grainy, pseudo-black and white that has become a war film staple since Saving Private Ryan, the movie follows the five men who raised the victory flag on Iwo Jima, an event immortalized in the famous photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, and recreated for the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial. But it's not necessarily a war movie - it's a mystery. Who are those five men in the photo? Were any of them misidentified? And why?
There's a lot of story here - we jump from the present to pre-war training to the 1950s to the battle itself - and it's nice to see Eastwood teasing out different narrative tricks. But the film's clunky non-linear structure defeats its straightforward director; mostly, it's just confusing. When we discover how far Eastwood is going to take his decency, though, it's downright irritating: even though Flags of Our Fathers was produced and released during our stickiest conflict since Vietnam, there's no hint at relevancy. Was it made in a vacuum?
Probably not. Eastwood probably made the film with the best intentions - a memorial to heroism. But heroism is too ambitious a topic for this director and the central conflict barely even registers. The bland group of star players isn't prepared to do much heavy lifting either.
There's no doubt that Eastwood is an icon - great filmmakers like Sergio Leone and Don Siegel guided him into action movie history. But behind the camera, there's still that squinty-eyed nothingness that made him a star, and there's nothing to go on except the insistence that what we're watching matters. But it doesn't.
At least movies that leave an icky taste in my mouth give me something; Eastwood's films don't have any taste at all.
This review originally appeared in Wichita City Paper on October 26, 2006.
Clint Eastwood has never been an artist. He never was a craftsman either. Like the rough-and-tumble characters he used to play, Eastwood is a professional: someone who goes in and gets the job done. Grace has never been part of his arsenal; he prefers a Magnum.
But that Magnum has always been well aimed, whether at a hippie's forehead or an audience's gut. As a director, Eastwood has created a niche for himself as a decent filmmaker. That's not to say that he's very good: his films tend to feel clumsy and never make much of an impression. But he's never showy, and audiences have responded to his low-profile approach. Eastwood's last two films, Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby, managed the near-impossible feat of being maudlin without feeling overwrought - low-key ham. And though awards were heaped upon the films like mashed potatoes, I couldn't help but feel duped: ham should taste like ham, and cheese should taste like cheese.
Flags of Our Fathers is a stylistic departure for Eastwood. Shot in the grainy, pseudo-black and white that has become a war film staple since Saving Private Ryan, the movie follows the five men who raised the victory flag on Iwo Jima, an event immortalized in the famous photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, and recreated for the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial. But it's not necessarily a war movie - it's a mystery. Who are those five men in the photo? Were any of them misidentified? And why?
There's a lot of story here - we jump from the present to pre-war training to the 1950s to the battle itself - and it's nice to see Eastwood teasing out different narrative tricks. But the film's clunky non-linear structure defeats its straightforward director; mostly, it's just confusing. When we discover how far Eastwood is going to take his decency, though, it's downright irritating: even though Flags of Our Fathers was produced and released during our stickiest conflict since Vietnam, there's no hint at relevancy. Was it made in a vacuum?
Probably not. Eastwood probably made the film with the best intentions - a memorial to heroism. But heroism is too ambitious a topic for this director and the central conflict barely even registers. The bland group of star players isn't prepared to do much heavy lifting either.
There's no doubt that Eastwood is an icon - great filmmakers like Sergio Leone and Don Siegel guided him into action movie history. But behind the camera, there's still that squinty-eyed nothingness that made him a star, and there's nothing to go on except the insistence that what we're watching matters. But it doesn't.
At least movies that leave an icky taste in my mouth give me something; Eastwood's films don't have any taste at all.
This review originally appeared in Wichita City Paper on October 26, 2006.
Fists in the Pocket (DVD review)
(1965, Italy. Directed by Marco Bellocchio.)
Even up against its legendarily edgy nouvelle vague brothers, Fists in the Pocket stands out as a punk rock entertainment. It's nasty, mean, and as close to horror as the New Wave, raging just across the border, got. Alongside that movement's gangsters, whores, and gunmen stands Fists in the Pocket's badass anti-hero. He's a kind of coffeehouse Travis Bickle; a rebel among rebels. And, like the movie, he's terrifying.
At the film's center is a family of outcasts, a bourgeois European version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre clan. Dysfunctional is too kind a word for these guys: they're each so far out of their minds that the audience has trouble discerning who is closest to the edge. But when it comes time to clean house, the epileptic mad genius of a youngest son steps up to the task. When Fists in the Pocket was released in 1965, one displeased critic called him an "aestheticized Nazi," and that's not far off. (Today we might call him a blonde Jason Voorhees.) And yet he's not without a sly allure - the audience watches between its fingers as he disintegrates, leaving nothing in his wake. The film is as sneaky as its own hero; we begin to ask ourselves if we would act any differently. It's a seductively vicious movie.
Made in Italy by first-time director Marco Bellocchio, known as Italian cinema's great psychologist, Fists in the Pocket is a nightmare Rebel Without a Cause. It slyly insinuates motive where there isn't any: it's all Lynchian madness, but we follow the insanity right to the end. Few films have the emotional justification to close with two minutes of deaf, black silence. This one earns each chilling second.
Though belatedly released by the Criterion Collection on DVD, Fists in the Pocket is an essential movie - one that curiously fell through the cracks. It is a thrill to discover.
This review originally appeared in Wichita City Paper 0n October 26, 2006.
Even up against its legendarily edgy nouvelle vague brothers, Fists in the Pocket stands out as a punk rock entertainment. It's nasty, mean, and as close to horror as the New Wave, raging just across the border, got. Alongside that movement's gangsters, whores, and gunmen stands Fists in the Pocket's badass anti-hero. He's a kind of coffeehouse Travis Bickle; a rebel among rebels. And, like the movie, he's terrifying.
At the film's center is a family of outcasts, a bourgeois European version of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre clan. Dysfunctional is too kind a word for these guys: they're each so far out of their minds that the audience has trouble discerning who is closest to the edge. But when it comes time to clean house, the epileptic mad genius of a youngest son steps up to the task. When Fists in the Pocket was released in 1965, one displeased critic called him an "aestheticized Nazi," and that's not far off. (Today we might call him a blonde Jason Voorhees.) And yet he's not without a sly allure - the audience watches between its fingers as he disintegrates, leaving nothing in his wake. The film is as sneaky as its own hero; we begin to ask ourselves if we would act any differently. It's a seductively vicious movie.
Made in Italy by first-time director Marco Bellocchio, known as Italian cinema's great psychologist, Fists in the Pocket is a nightmare Rebel Without a Cause. It slyly insinuates motive where there isn't any: it's all Lynchian madness, but we follow the insanity right to the end. Few films have the emotional justification to close with two minutes of deaf, black silence. This one earns each chilling second.
Though belatedly released by the Criterion Collection on DVD, Fists in the Pocket is an essential movie - one that curiously fell through the cracks. It is a thrill to discover.
This review originally appeared in Wichita City Paper 0n October 26, 2006.
The Marine
(2006, USA. Directed by John Bonito)
The Marine is an easy target. It’s big, hulking, and dumb, and I almost feel bad launching a SCUD missile its way. But these are dangerous times and the enemy is subversive. I’ve seen Al-Qaeda’s propaganda, and those trashy, videotaped things are nowhere near as scary as The Marine’s sleekly efficient recruitment-commercial-in-disguise. It’s moronic, but with a purpose – it’s trying to hide something. At least Al-Qaeda is up-front about what it’s up to.
The film’s plot is reminiscent of 1970s post-Vietnam trash like the Billy Jack films and Walking Tall: a war vet returns home, punks threaten his family, and he must take the law into his own hands. Here, a too-patriotic marine is discharged after a heroic assault on Al-Qaeda in Iraq. (Told to hold his position, the soldier ignores his orders and sets three bad guys on fire. It looks a whole lot like murder, but hey, this is war.) The Marine Corps just doesn’t get it though, and sends our hero packing back home to “the great state of South Carolina” – land of the Confederate flag, SUVs, and Strom Thurmond. He has trouble as a civilian (“It’s not about work, it’s not about a job. Being a marine meant everything to me.”), and so the marine and his foxy wife – he looks like G.I. Joe and she like Barbie – decide to take a vacation. Where to? The wife selects the beach. “Baby, I think I’ve seen enough sand.” To the mountains it is. But before they cross state lines, diamond thieves hijack the SUV, kidnap the babe, and leave the marine down for the count. But once a marine, always a marine. And a long chase ensues.
The titular character is played by John Cena, a wrestler whose signature moves include the Running Corner Attack, the Sit-Down Hip Toss, and Double Leg Spine Buster. (It looks like he employs each of them here – each fight scene is staged one-on-one like it’s Monday Night RAW.) Poor Cena would have trouble getting cast in a high school production; he keeps doing that shrug that non-actors use as a catchall gesture. His perpetual dumb grin doesn’t help either, and he stands out among the other low-rent character players. Robert Patrick shows up as the head diamond thief. He cracks wise a lot and is supposed to be smarter than everyone else (he brags of his “litany of atrocities”). There’s a scene where a thug compares the marine to the Terminator and Patrick raises his eyebrows – the character even knows the filmography of the actor playing him.
This kind of jokey tone pervades much of the film and it’s score sounds like Trevor Rabin (of Michael Bay’s films) writing for a Looney Tunes episode – every zinger is punctuated by a BOING. But what makes Bay’s films so entertaining is their seriousness. The patriotism is hilariously sincere. Here the irony feels like a covert-ops sneak attack and its detachment bugs me. Are they trying to fool us?
Cena’s wrestling nickname is the Franchise. (He also goes by the Prototype – personally, I’d take the final version.) The Marine itself has a business-like slickness that, along with it’s corporation-friendly star, gives me a creepy military-industrial complex vibe. So, like it’s anti-establishment friendly Vietnam ancestors, at least it’s true to its time. Semper Fi, I guess.
This review originally appeared in Wichita City Paper on October 19, 2006.
The Marine is an easy target. It’s big, hulking, and dumb, and I almost feel bad launching a SCUD missile its way. But these are dangerous times and the enemy is subversive. I’ve seen Al-Qaeda’s propaganda, and those trashy, videotaped things are nowhere near as scary as The Marine’s sleekly efficient recruitment-commercial-in-disguise. It’s moronic, but with a purpose – it’s trying to hide something. At least Al-Qaeda is up-front about what it’s up to.
The film’s plot is reminiscent of 1970s post-Vietnam trash like the Billy Jack films and Walking Tall: a war vet returns home, punks threaten his family, and he must take the law into his own hands. Here, a too-patriotic marine is discharged after a heroic assault on Al-Qaeda in Iraq. (Told to hold his position, the soldier ignores his orders and sets three bad guys on fire. It looks a whole lot like murder, but hey, this is war.) The Marine Corps just doesn’t get it though, and sends our hero packing back home to “the great state of South Carolina” – land of the Confederate flag, SUVs, and Strom Thurmond. He has trouble as a civilian (“It’s not about work, it’s not about a job. Being a marine meant everything to me.”), and so the marine and his foxy wife – he looks like G.I. Joe and she like Barbie – decide to take a vacation. Where to? The wife selects the beach. “Baby, I think I’ve seen enough sand.” To the mountains it is. But before they cross state lines, diamond thieves hijack the SUV, kidnap the babe, and leave the marine down for the count. But once a marine, always a marine. And a long chase ensues.
The titular character is played by John Cena, a wrestler whose signature moves include the Running Corner Attack, the Sit-Down Hip Toss, and Double Leg Spine Buster. (It looks like he employs each of them here – each fight scene is staged one-on-one like it’s Monday Night RAW.) Poor Cena would have trouble getting cast in a high school production; he keeps doing that shrug that non-actors use as a catchall gesture. His perpetual dumb grin doesn’t help either, and he stands out among the other low-rent character players. Robert Patrick shows up as the head diamond thief. He cracks wise a lot and is supposed to be smarter than everyone else (he brags of his “litany of atrocities”). There’s a scene where a thug compares the marine to the Terminator and Patrick raises his eyebrows – the character even knows the filmography of the actor playing him.
This kind of jokey tone pervades much of the film and it’s score sounds like Trevor Rabin (of Michael Bay’s films) writing for a Looney Tunes episode – every zinger is punctuated by a BOING. But what makes Bay’s films so entertaining is their seriousness. The patriotism is hilariously sincere. Here the irony feels like a covert-ops sneak attack and its detachment bugs me. Are they trying to fool us?
Cena’s wrestling nickname is the Franchise. (He also goes by the Prototype – personally, I’d take the final version.) The Marine itself has a business-like slickness that, along with it’s corporation-friendly star, gives me a creepy military-industrial complex vibe. So, like it’s anti-establishment friendly Vietnam ancestors, at least it’s true to its time. Semper Fi, I guess.
This review originally appeared in Wichita City Paper on October 19, 2006.
Jackass: Number Two
(2006, USA. Directed byJeff Tremaine.)
“Fuck art. Let’s dance,” declares Bam Margera’s T-shirt. When the fan kicks on, he’s lifted off his feet and hurled to the back of the wind tunnel like a paper cup. Seconds later, he awakens trapped in the same tunnel in the company of a displeased King Cobra. Margera volunteered for the stunt, but only the first half; he’s terrified of snakes. His buddies – Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, and a dwarf nicknamed Wee Man – were responsible for the rest. With Margera knocked off his feet by a fan that looks like it’s on loan from NASA, his friends scramble to corral him in and introduce the magnificent reptile before he comes to. Even if the scene ends in tears, I imagine them thinking, the whole thing will still be pretty damn funny. It indeed does end in tears and it is damn funny.
We don’t know Bam Margera, or any one else in Jackass: Number Two for that matter. But the scene (and the whole picture) relies upon an intimate relationship and camaraderie with these perpetually adolescent men. We need to find it hilarious when Margera is brought to tears rather than deem it cruel. We need to like these guys, because otherwise, Jackass could easily be an exercise in masochism. But they’re having way too much fun. Watching Margera cry, we know that a sketch or two later, he’ll get his revenge. But is revenge too nasty a word? What makes this unabashedly stupid film so smart is its heart; the Jackass guys are nice. They don’t have a mean – or unbroken – bone in their bodies. Every nosedive, pratfall, or wipeout can crack a smile as well as a rib. A wall-mounted fan letter, for instance, conceals a Wile E. Coyote-like booby-trap; after a boxing-glove blow to the head, the victim can’t wait to grab a buddy. “Get closer. Read the small print.” It’s easy to like these guys; we even feel comfortable around them. (They certainly feel comfortable around us – few stay dressed for the film’s duration.) They welcome us into their atavistic circle but never threaten us. And rarely do they seem to truly threaten each other; in their unspoken rulebook, bullying seems off limits. Sadism, though, is encouraged.
Ringleader, rule maker, and chief-sadist Johnny Knoxville, a kind of skateboarding Bob Flannigan, gained infamy first on MTV. A 30-minute non-narrative collection of stunts, accidents, and occasional Candid Camera-like sketches, Knoxville’s Jackass earned the network its highest ever ratings before his departure, and the series’ subsequent cancellation, three seasons later. After the show’s end, the cast reunited for a 90-minute farewell titled Jackass: The Movie and then again for the recently released Jackass: Number Two. The first film’s subtitle is less audaciously stupid than its sequel’s, though it may be funnier – it is debatable whether either of the Jackass movies are really movies at all. Jackass has always had a few post-modern tricks up its sleeve: the TV series silently wondered what it is people really want from a television show. Do TV audiences ask for a plot? A point? Would anyone watch America’s Funniest Home Videos if it were devoid of its game show conceit? Though I doubt it intended to become an adult version of America’s Funniest Home Videos, Jackass essentially was – a string of short, unrelated situations in which spontaneously unreal events affected real people. (And if someone gets hurt while attempting something dumb, be it Steve-O snorting wasabi or some moron undertaking an aerial snowmobile stunt, he was asking for it.) TV was a perfect medium for the show’s structure and its sensibility. When a troupe-member trembles before attempting a particularly outrageous stunt (eating a urine-soak snow cone for example), Johnny Knoxville oftentimes can be heard offscreen, reassuring his disciple, “Don’t think about it; just do it.” When one watched the 30-minute Jackass, he didn’t think about it; he just did it. It was over as quickly as one of their stupid stunts, and usually left the viewer just as dazed.
A movie, on the other hand, is much bigger and leaves its audience with much less choice. Directed by the same guys responsible for the TV series, Jackass: Number Two feels a bit ungainly; the sensibilities behind the camera haven’t shifted much from one medium to the other. And if a stunt is maybe a little too grizzly, the channel can’t be changed. All you can do is cover your eyes, wait it out, or flee the theater. (My colleague, Jake Euker, took off during a protracted nightmare involving Stevo-O’s eyeball and a leech.) Without a commercial or break in sight, its 95 minutes feel long.
But it isn’t excruciating. The ugly recurring bits where Margera beats his dad like an ape have been excised here. Margera’s dad even leads an especially clever prank in Number Two – everyone’s included and nobody gets that upset. These guys aren’t mean.
And while it may be counterintuitive, I don’t think they’re dumb either. Number Two includes a bee attack on a limo that wouldn’t seem out of place in a Luis Buñuel film. John Waters appears in a cameo that silently traces the line between this film that director’s outrageous attacks on common decency from the 1970s. There’s even a “sketch-within-a-sketch,” wherein the toothless, and maybe most brainless, member of the group develops a semi-racist scenario involving Islamic terrorism. Wearing a turban, a fake beard, and dynamite, he plans to hail a cab and direct the driver to the airport in an effort to terrify the poor chauffer. Knoxville, though, hires the director Jay Chandrasekhar to play the panicky cabdriver, instructing him to pull a gun on the toothless idiot, cow him, and eventually force him into the cab’s trunk at gunpoint. After the petrified moron is let in on the joke, Knoxville mentions that the fake beard is made from the entire cast’s pubic hair. The sketch is uncomfortable from the beginning; first scary in its apparent bigotry, the scene grows even more frightening when we discover the consequences of breaking the Jackass code of ethics.
Knoxville and his crew know exactly what they are doing every step of the way, and like Margera’s t-shirt, they’re not entirely honest. Taken together, the two films’ titles reveal a lot about the group’s art: one is a self-referential meta-puzzle; the other is about poop. It’s easy to dismiss a film with a reference to excrement in its title, but it would be a mistake. There’s more to Jackass than meets the eye, and its ultimate prank might be its seeming lack of substance. But, what exactly is Johnny Knoxville trying to say?
Maybe the film’s opening salvo provides some clues. On a typical residential suburban street, white and pink two-story homes with immaculate lawns are guarded by white picket fences. It’s an idyllic, Anytown, USA. The Eden is betrayed, though, by an ominous fog in the distance. In slow motion, the cast of Jackass emerges, sprinting from the haze at full tilt. It’s unclear for a moment what has these guys so spooked until a stampede of wild bulls blitzes the neighborhood. The guys try to hide; but any shelter is blown to bits by the beasts. In a mindless rampage, the animals level the once quiet lane. Living rooms are shredded to bits, kitchens become piles of rubble, and the neighbor’s new Mercedes is reduced to scrap. Nothing is spared. But as the bodies fly and the suburbs go down in flames, you can’t help by laugh at how ridiculous the whole thing is. Revolution has never been this much fun.
This review originally appeared in Wichita City Paper on October 5, 2006.
“Fuck art. Let’s dance,” declares Bam Margera’s T-shirt. When the fan kicks on, he’s lifted off his feet and hurled to the back of the wind tunnel like a paper cup. Seconds later, he awakens trapped in the same tunnel in the company of a displeased King Cobra. Margera volunteered for the stunt, but only the first half; he’s terrified of snakes. His buddies – Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris Pontius, and a dwarf nicknamed Wee Man – were responsible for the rest. With Margera knocked off his feet by a fan that looks like it’s on loan from NASA, his friends scramble to corral him in and introduce the magnificent reptile before he comes to. Even if the scene ends in tears, I imagine them thinking, the whole thing will still be pretty damn funny. It indeed does end in tears and it is damn funny.
We don’t know Bam Margera, or any one else in Jackass: Number Two for that matter. But the scene (and the whole picture) relies upon an intimate relationship and camaraderie with these perpetually adolescent men. We need to find it hilarious when Margera is brought to tears rather than deem it cruel. We need to like these guys, because otherwise, Jackass could easily be an exercise in masochism. But they’re having way too much fun. Watching Margera cry, we know that a sketch or two later, he’ll get his revenge. But is revenge too nasty a word? What makes this unabashedly stupid film so smart is its heart; the Jackass guys are nice. They don’t have a mean – or unbroken – bone in their bodies. Every nosedive, pratfall, or wipeout can crack a smile as well as a rib. A wall-mounted fan letter, for instance, conceals a Wile E. Coyote-like booby-trap; after a boxing-glove blow to the head, the victim can’t wait to grab a buddy. “Get closer. Read the small print.” It’s easy to like these guys; we even feel comfortable around them. (They certainly feel comfortable around us – few stay dressed for the film’s duration.) They welcome us into their atavistic circle but never threaten us. And rarely do they seem to truly threaten each other; in their unspoken rulebook, bullying seems off limits. Sadism, though, is encouraged.
Ringleader, rule maker, and chief-sadist Johnny Knoxville, a kind of skateboarding Bob Flannigan, gained infamy first on MTV. A 30-minute non-narrative collection of stunts, accidents, and occasional Candid Camera-like sketches, Knoxville’s Jackass earned the network its highest ever ratings before his departure, and the series’ subsequent cancellation, three seasons later. After the show’s end, the cast reunited for a 90-minute farewell titled Jackass: The Movie and then again for the recently released Jackass: Number Two. The first film’s subtitle is less audaciously stupid than its sequel’s, though it may be funnier – it is debatable whether either of the Jackass movies are really movies at all. Jackass has always had a few post-modern tricks up its sleeve: the TV series silently wondered what it is people really want from a television show. Do TV audiences ask for a plot? A point? Would anyone watch America’s Funniest Home Videos if it were devoid of its game show conceit? Though I doubt it intended to become an adult version of America’s Funniest Home Videos, Jackass essentially was – a string of short, unrelated situations in which spontaneously unreal events affected real people. (And if someone gets hurt while attempting something dumb, be it Steve-O snorting wasabi or some moron undertaking an aerial snowmobile stunt, he was asking for it.) TV was a perfect medium for the show’s structure and its sensibility. When a troupe-member trembles before attempting a particularly outrageous stunt (eating a urine-soak snow cone for example), Johnny Knoxville oftentimes can be heard offscreen, reassuring his disciple, “Don’t think about it; just do it.” When one watched the 30-minute Jackass, he didn’t think about it; he just did it. It was over as quickly as one of their stupid stunts, and usually left the viewer just as dazed.
A movie, on the other hand, is much bigger and leaves its audience with much less choice. Directed by the same guys responsible for the TV series, Jackass: Number Two feels a bit ungainly; the sensibilities behind the camera haven’t shifted much from one medium to the other. And if a stunt is maybe a little too grizzly, the channel can’t be changed. All you can do is cover your eyes, wait it out, or flee the theater. (My colleague, Jake Euker, took off during a protracted nightmare involving Stevo-O’s eyeball and a leech.) Without a commercial or break in sight, its 95 minutes feel long.
But it isn’t excruciating. The ugly recurring bits where Margera beats his dad like an ape have been excised here. Margera’s dad even leads an especially clever prank in Number Two – everyone’s included and nobody gets that upset. These guys aren’t mean.
And while it may be counterintuitive, I don’t think they’re dumb either. Number Two includes a bee attack on a limo that wouldn’t seem out of place in a Luis Buñuel film. John Waters appears in a cameo that silently traces the line between this film that director’s outrageous attacks on common decency from the 1970s. There’s even a “sketch-within-a-sketch,” wherein the toothless, and maybe most brainless, member of the group develops a semi-racist scenario involving Islamic terrorism. Wearing a turban, a fake beard, and dynamite, he plans to hail a cab and direct the driver to the airport in an effort to terrify the poor chauffer. Knoxville, though, hires the director Jay Chandrasekhar to play the panicky cabdriver, instructing him to pull a gun on the toothless idiot, cow him, and eventually force him into the cab’s trunk at gunpoint. After the petrified moron is let in on the joke, Knoxville mentions that the fake beard is made from the entire cast’s pubic hair. The sketch is uncomfortable from the beginning; first scary in its apparent bigotry, the scene grows even more frightening when we discover the consequences of breaking the Jackass code of ethics.
Knoxville and his crew know exactly what they are doing every step of the way, and like Margera’s t-shirt, they’re not entirely honest. Taken together, the two films’ titles reveal a lot about the group’s art: one is a self-referential meta-puzzle; the other is about poop. It’s easy to dismiss a film with a reference to excrement in its title, but it would be a mistake. There’s more to Jackass than meets the eye, and its ultimate prank might be its seeming lack of substance. But, what exactly is Johnny Knoxville trying to say?
Maybe the film’s opening salvo provides some clues. On a typical residential suburban street, white and pink two-story homes with immaculate lawns are guarded by white picket fences. It’s an idyllic, Anytown, USA. The Eden is betrayed, though, by an ominous fog in the distance. In slow motion, the cast of Jackass emerges, sprinting from the haze at full tilt. It’s unclear for a moment what has these guys so spooked until a stampede of wild bulls blitzes the neighborhood. The guys try to hide; but any shelter is blown to bits by the beasts. In a mindless rampage, the animals level the once quiet lane. Living rooms are shredded to bits, kitchens become piles of rubble, and the neighbor’s new Mercedes is reduced to scrap. Nothing is spared. But as the bodies fly and the suburbs go down in flames, you can’t help by laugh at how ridiculous the whole thing is. Revolution has never been this much fun.
This review originally appeared in Wichita City Paper on October 5, 2006.
The Killers (DVD review)
(1946, USA. Directed by Robert Siodmak / 1964, USA. Directed by Don Siegel.)
Two gangsters knock off a has-been who accepts his own death. It's that simple — according to Ernest Hemingway. But Hollywood needs a little more plot than that, and Universal took two shots at Hemingway's minimalist short story, once in 1946 and again in '64. And while testosterone levels didn't change in those years in-between, plenty else did. Both versions of The Killers are now available in a two-DVD set from Criterion.
1946's The Killers is all shadows, dark alleyways and fedoras. Burt Lancaster stars as a has-been boxer devoted to quintessential femme fatale Ava Gardner. With high-contrast black-and-white photography, over-the-top acting, and a lounge called "The Green Lizard," Robert Siodmak's tale of idiotic macho fatalism includes everything we love about the genre. And even if you have to wonder why these guys just can't be nice to one another, it's undeniably entertaining.
Eighteen years later, Don Siegel put his own spin on the story. This time, Lee Marvin is a hit-man who wonders why has-been racer John Cassavetes didn't put up a fight. Angie Dickinson is the girl here, and Ronald Reagan is the bad guy. A brutal, bleached-out piece of 1960s American tough-guy filmmaking, Siegel's The Killers is tail-end noir at its most tight and vicious. That's not to say it isn't fun; it just may bring out the animal in you — but then who doesn't want to see Reagan get what's coming to him?
The discs include a reading of the original story and a 19-minute screen adaptation by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris), who, unbelievably, is the director who comes the closest to filming Hemingway's text. The attitudes may seem, oh, counterproductive today, but whether Ava Gardner or Angie Dickinson is more your type, both movies are a blast.
This review originally appeared in F5 in April 17, 2003.
Two gangsters knock off a has-been who accepts his own death. It's that simple — according to Ernest Hemingway. But Hollywood needs a little more plot than that, and Universal took two shots at Hemingway's minimalist short story, once in 1946 and again in '64. And while testosterone levels didn't change in those years in-between, plenty else did. Both versions of The Killers are now available in a two-DVD set from Criterion.
1946's The Killers is all shadows, dark alleyways and fedoras. Burt Lancaster stars as a has-been boxer devoted to quintessential femme fatale Ava Gardner. With high-contrast black-and-white photography, over-the-top acting, and a lounge called "The Green Lizard," Robert Siodmak's tale of idiotic macho fatalism includes everything we love about the genre. And even if you have to wonder why these guys just can't be nice to one another, it's undeniably entertaining.
Eighteen years later, Don Siegel put his own spin on the story. This time, Lee Marvin is a hit-man who wonders why has-been racer John Cassavetes didn't put up a fight. Angie Dickinson is the girl here, and Ronald Reagan is the bad guy. A brutal, bleached-out piece of 1960s American tough-guy filmmaking, Siegel's The Killers is tail-end noir at its most tight and vicious. That's not to say it isn't fun; it just may bring out the animal in you — but then who doesn't want to see Reagan get what's coming to him?
The discs include a reading of the original story and a 19-minute screen adaptation by Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky (Solaris), who, unbelievably, is the director who comes the closest to filming Hemingway's text. The attitudes may seem, oh, counterproductive today, but whether Ava Gardner or Angie Dickinson is more your type, both movies are a blast.
This review originally appeared in F5 in April 17, 2003.
Stray Dog (DVD review)
(1949, Japan. Directed by Akira Kurosawa.)
Samurai, horses, and bandits. Akira Kurosawa built a career on fierce, sword-wielding adventures set in Feudal Japan. His Rashomon, Seven Samurai, and Throne of Blood are shogun masterpieces, but Kurosawa's films always feel strangely Western despite the ponytails and sandals. Turn the samurai into cowboys and John Ford could have made these movies.
It's not improbable, then, that he would look to the West for inspiration in making his present-set Stray Dog (1949), just added to the glorious Criterion Collection.
It's noir meets Hitchcock when rookie cop Toshiro Mifune loses his gun to a pickpocket on a crowded, sweltering bus. Already damaged professionally, the greenhorn's pride plunges when his gun surfaces in a string of brutal female murders. Scouring the seediest of
If Hitchcock were making the film, the gun would be the MacGuffin: Mifune's hunt would lead to a psychologically probing romance. But this is straight-ahead noir, and the desperate search leaves the sexual undertones just beneath the film's frantic surface. (Gun = penis, get it?)
And though Stray Dog is worlds — and centuries — away from Kurosawa's Eastern epics, don't mistake that for insignificance. This is still a master at the height of his craft — only this time, the bandits carry .45s.
This review originally appeared in F5 on June 3, 2004.
Once Upon a Time in America (DVD review)
(1984, Italy/USA. Directed by Sergio Leone.)
Compare Titanic and Gone with the Wind. Gangs of
Leone's turn-of-the-century
The film follows four "brothers" — a rowdy bunch headed by Robert de Niro and James Woods — from tenement life through prohibition and onward to the 1960s, changing its tone with the times. In between, we're treated to several heists, Peckinpah-like violence, and two rape scenes. It's like The Godfather with added Sonny death scenes. And it is all bookended with an aging de Niro returning to the city in the 1970s, hazily remembering the whole thing, so that not everything has to make sense or flow together.
By the time we reach Kennedy-era corruption, Leone has run out of steam and we're treated to a functional, if bizarre, ending. But every time I rolled my eyes at a cliché line, an unmotivated action, or what seemed to be bad filmmaking, I looked right back at the screen, absorbed, until the film's four hours had passed. Once Upon a Time in America's content may be trite and tired, but the sheer scope of the production and Leone's eye for framing nearly defeat its faults. It's a hazy, lyrical, troubled, and incomplete movie, but it may be a great one just the same.
This review originally appeared in F5 on July 31, 2003.
The Tenant (DVD review)
(1976, France/USA. Directed by Roman Polanski.)
“All of them. They're all in on it," whispers the heroine of Roman Polanski's paranoid classic Rosemary's Baby. You could apply that first adjective — paranoid — to a lot of Polanski's work, and the man has positively convinced many of his leading players that there were plots against them: Mia Farrow, wondering if her husband and neighbors were after her baby, and Harrison Ford, frantic after his wife is kidnapped in
Polanski is Trelkovsky, a Polish immigrant who has the good fortune to find a newly available apartment in crowded
Nothing seems to make sense until Trelkovsky discovers workers replacing the glass below his window, and tracing the dots, he screams, "They're repairing it for me!" In a harrowing descent into madness so strange and vivid it would end a young filmmaker's career today, Polanski transforms his shy thriller into a Tootsie-esque nightmare before our eyes, crafting a film crazier and more scarily baffling than anything we're used to. If anything, the movie reminds us that there was a time when films could be as nutty as their makers, and after it's over, its claustrophobia hangs in the air — just don't expect to know what the hell you just saw.
This review originally appeared in F5 on July 10, 2003.
Il Posto (DVD review)
(1961,
A teenager from a small village outside
It may sound tedious, but trust me, it's one of the most moving movies you're ever likely to see. Olmi's unique vision of 1961
If Office Space laughed at the lower echelon of the corporate world, Il Posto exposes its cold-as-hell center.
Adaptation (DVD review)
(2002,
Near the end of Adaptation, a character laughs, "I got shot; isn't that fucked up?" Well, it really is. Amazingly, a major Hollywood studio filmed this script, put a ton of money into it, and released it upon
Following the success of his Being John Malkovich screenplay, writer Charlie Kaufman (Nicolas Cage) is desperately struggling not to turn his latest assignment into a "
The DVD is part of the Superbit Collection, meaning every byte of the disc not used for the movie is dedicated to superior picture and sound. Unfortunately, that means no special features, but really, this movie speaks for itself.
With narrative shifts that throw the viewer from the birth of life on Earth to Victorian-era England and introduce them to personalities from Catherine Keener to Charles Darwin, Adaptation is the film equivalent of the tallest, fastest roller-coaster ride on the planet — so remember to secure your belongings, keep legs and arms inside the car at all times, and hang on.
This review originally appeared in F5 on June 12, 2003.
Band of Outsiders (DVD review)
(1964,
The French loved American gangster films, but Jean-Luc Godard took his love for the genre in a new direction. Using his own advice like a mantra, he boiled down the crime movie, prying everything away except the gun and the girl. In the process, he made the most accessibly brilliant film of his career. His 1964 masterpiece, Band of Outsiders, is now available on a feature-packed DVD from the Criterion Collection.
Anna Karina is the girl here, pursued by two young college students who routinely dress like James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. The plan: Rob the girl's mother. The trick: If the girl's in on it, they're home free. The catch: The childish and fickle girl may just screw everything up. Oh, also, they've both fallen for her.
But the plot isn't what matters here; the heist story is only a launch pad. The movie is really about how much fun movies are to make, watch, and be a part of — it is one of the most giddily loving films ever made. And if the characters have to halt the plot to take "the fastest tour of the Louvre ever" or participate in an impromptu dance number, it's all part of the fun.
Nine Queens (DVD review)
(2000,
This subtle, cool and quietly gritty movie from
After the initial setup, the film follows the new friends during one extraordinary day when the chance of a lifetime presents itself: the Nine Queens — a set of stamps so rare and invaluable that a serious collector would pay anything for them. Even though the set that lands in our heroes' hands is completely fake, an opportunity like this is almost too good to be true, and every trick in the book is pulled when a buyer comes to town. But you really have to wonder — who's conning whom?
Interestingly, Nine Queens was made as a result of a Project Greenlight-like contest in
Be smarter than the con man: Don't miss Nine Queens.
Femme Fatale (DVD review)
(2002,
Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is self-described "bad girl" Laure. She's hiding out in
Revealing any more plot would be rotten to the heart, as De Palma ignores any and all narrative rules we are used to. The movie twists and turns, jumps seven years into the future, and plays with coincidences as much as Laure plays with every man in the film. It's almost the director's "greatest hits" — De Palma piles on split-screen shots, slow motion and bombastic camera tricks like it's his last shot at glory. The result is pure cinematic candy; it's trash, but we're in on the joke.
The joke, however, seems to have flown over the heads of Romijn-Stamos and Banderas, who act like they're in a high school production of Wait Until Dark but have missed all of the rehearsals. They are sincerely trying and really want to do their best, but, well ... they suck, and it supremely adds to the fun.
Add in a script that is at once painfully hilarious and hilariously painful (you won't believe Laure's sexual instructions to Banderas) and Femme Fatale becomes a masterpiece of modern kitsch. With breathtaking sequences around every corner, it makes up for every mistake De Palma has made in the last 10 years. And who knows? Maybe he'll go straight — but, like Laure, I wouldn't count on it.
This review originally appeared in F5 on May 8, 2003.
The 400 Blows (DVD review)
(1959,
Calling Francois Truffaut's The 400 Blows "required viewing" isn't doing it a favor. The movie is a masterpiece — the kind that changed the way movies were made. But it's not a chore to watch. It's one of the saddest, most involving and most heartbreakingly realistic portraits of growing up that has ever played on a screen.
Thirteen-year-old Antoine Doinel's life sucks. He's at odds with his parents, he's constantly in trouble at school, and he's bored out of his mind — basically, he's a kid. So what if he skips school, spends his lunch money on carnival rides, or accidentally sets fire to his room when his shrine to Balzac goes aflame? Like any kid, he's trying to have fun. As his life deteriorates — he catches his mom cheating and is suspended from school — Antoine takes to the streets of
Almost cruelly romantic in tone, The 400 Blows' cool melancholy is as touching as the performances. (It is hard to believe that Jean-Pierre Léaud isn't Antoine. The look on his face when a psychologist asks him if he has ever had sex, for instance, is one of film's most memorable moments.)
The movie is now available as part of a new Criterion four-disc DVD set. The box includes a short film and three feature-length stories that continue Antoine's adventures into adulthood: Antoine and Colette, Bed and Board, Stolen Kisses, and Love on the Run. (Léaud stars as the character throughout the series.) While none may approach the stature of the original, The 400 Blows leaves viewers dying to know what happens when the poor kid really does grow up.
The 400 Blows may be branded with "importance," but trust me — from the opening shots of 1960s Paris to the haunting final image, it is so bittersweet and entertaining that it can hold up to at least 400 viewings.
This review originally appeared in F5 on May 1, 2003.
Ringu (DVD review)
(1998, Japan. Directed by Hideo Nakata.)
The Ring did well at the box office last fall, and it was an OK piece of entertainment. And like the killer videotape in the movie, the 1998 Japanese version became almost a myth — the scariest thing caught on film and impossible to find. Imagine my surprise to see Ringu sitting on the shelf at Borders, now available on DVD.
The plot is nearly identical to the American movie: A reporter investigates the origins of a mysterious VHS that, after seven days, kills anyone who watches it. While the
Ringu isn't a perfect movie, but its grainy, unfinished style runs circles around the typically polished American remake.
The DVD's only special feature is its availability — something we should be grateful for. It may not be a horror masterpiece (it certainly won't kill you), but it's actually scary, and — unlike most horror movies today — it's something you might remember seven days later.
This review originally appeared in F5 on April 24, 2003.
Assault on Precinct 13 (DVD review)
(1976,
Remaking Night of the Living Dead without the zombies seems like a regrettable idea. Replacing the zombies with badass Latino gangsters, though, is a stroke of bad movie genius. Titled Assault on Precinct 13 — because it's about an assault on Precinct 13 — John Carpenter's earnest and hilarious 1976 film does just that. Assault on Precinct 13 is newly available on DVD.
The plot: A small group of cops and not-so-bad prisoners defend a nearly abandoned police station from an
Included on the DVD is an isolated musical track for fans of Carpenter's signature three-notes-on-a-synthesizer style and a Q&A with Carpenter and star Austin Stoker, whose recent roles include Security Guard in Two Shades of Blue and Guard Number One in A Girl to Kill For. If anyone needs convincing that ineptitude can work in a film's favor, Assault on Precinct 13 is the argument needed.
This review originally appeared in F5 on April 10, 2003.
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
I Think I Love My Wife
(2007, USA. Directed by Chris Rock.)
Who knew that underneath all the bluster was blandness? The same guy people called incendiary and dangerous, the one who dared to “tell it like it is,” who was bigger, blacker, and who brought the pain, now spends his Friday nights watching TV with his wife and kids.
Firebrand comedian/media-prophet Chris Rock is a killer stage presence; he’s loud, mean, and defiant. He’s funny -- that’s for sure -- but Rock has always been a little scary with a microphone in his hand. Clad in black leather, he paces the stage like a cougar spewing turbulent, spot-on bile. And though most of his material is of the “funny ‘cause it’s true” variety, he doesn’t deal in easy truths; you never feel comfortable when he’s on his game.
So it’s strange that his new movie, I Think I Love My Wife, is all about comfort. Even stranger still is its source: I Think I Love My Wife is a remake of Eric Rohmer’s French New Wave classic Chloe in the Afternoon.
Rohmer’s film was the last part of his “Six Moral Tales,” a quiet, heady cycle that dealt with, above all, resistance to temptation. Unlike his New Wave peers, Rohmer wasn’t tempestuously political -- he was a mixed-up Catholic wondering how to approach the turbulent 1960s and 70s. His movies don’t share the movement’s formal abandon either; they’re slow moving affairs, often shot under florescent lights in offices and living room. A lot of people call him boring. Even more use “conservative.” But behind his movies’ turtlenecks and bland interiors is a curious prankster. Watching Chloe in the Afternoon, you can feel Rohmer connecting to his hero’s sexual longing and repulsed by his cozy bourgeois pettiness. When Catholic guilt wins out, it’s almost -- almost -- as if Rohmer believes in it all simply because it keeps these morons in check.
Improbably, I Think I Love My Wife (which Rock wrote and directed) is a remarkably faithful remake; scenes, situations, and lines are lifted verbatim. Much of the humor stems from frustration -- Rock’s wife won’t put out, his non-sexual affair is costing him at work, Viagra is way too potent -- and if some of the situations feel like a punched-up sitcom, a lot of Chloe in the Afternoon feels like a proto romantic comedy anyway.
But Rock isn’t really suited for frothy comedy. He looks uncomfortable wearing a suit and holding a briefcase, and he looks positively mismatched against his hot young costars. When flashes of social commentary pop up -- like criticism of hip-hop culture or racial color-blindness -- it’s often followed by a lame Michael Jackson joke. Domesticity has made this one-time hothead limp. (Maybe the Viagra wasn’t really such a bad idea.)
That hothead is still there -- you can hear it in the voice-over. That growl still booms and those eyes still dart. That’s why, when Rock sighs that he needs to stop complaining about the things he doesn’t have and appreciating the things that he does, it feels like such a cop out. You expect that kind of thing from Eric Rohmer, but from Chris Rock? Maybe fidelity isn’t such a great idea after all.
Who knew that underneath all the bluster was blandness? The same guy people called incendiary and dangerous, the one who dared to “tell it like it is,” who was bigger, blacker, and who brought the pain, now spends his Friday nights watching TV with his wife and kids.
Firebrand comedian/media-prophet Chris Rock is a killer stage presence; he’s loud, mean, and defiant. He’s funny -- that’s for sure -- but Rock has always been a little scary with a microphone in his hand. Clad in black leather, he paces the stage like a cougar spewing turbulent, spot-on bile. And though most of his material is of the “funny ‘cause it’s true” variety, he doesn’t deal in easy truths; you never feel comfortable when he’s on his game.
So it’s strange that his new movie, I Think I Love My Wife, is all about comfort. Even stranger still is its source: I Think I Love My Wife is a remake of Eric Rohmer’s French New Wave classic Chloe in the Afternoon.
Rohmer’s film was the last part of his “Six Moral Tales,” a quiet, heady cycle that dealt with, above all, resistance to temptation. Unlike his New Wave peers, Rohmer wasn’t tempestuously political -- he was a mixed-up Catholic wondering how to approach the turbulent 1960s and 70s. His movies don’t share the movement’s formal abandon either; they’re slow moving affairs, often shot under florescent lights in offices and living room. A lot of people call him boring. Even more use “conservative.” But behind his movies’ turtlenecks and bland interiors is a curious prankster. Watching Chloe in the Afternoon, you can feel Rohmer connecting to his hero’s sexual longing and repulsed by his cozy bourgeois pettiness. When Catholic guilt wins out, it’s almost -- almost -- as if Rohmer believes in it all simply because it keeps these morons in check.
Improbably, I Think I Love My Wife (which Rock wrote and directed) is a remarkably faithful remake; scenes, situations, and lines are lifted verbatim. Much of the humor stems from frustration -- Rock’s wife won’t put out, his non-sexual affair is costing him at work, Viagra is way too potent -- and if some of the situations feel like a punched-up sitcom, a lot of Chloe in the Afternoon feels like a proto romantic comedy anyway.
But Rock isn’t really suited for frothy comedy. He looks uncomfortable wearing a suit and holding a briefcase, and he looks positively mismatched against his hot young costars. When flashes of social commentary pop up -- like criticism of hip-hop culture or racial color-blindness -- it’s often followed by a lame Michael Jackson joke. Domesticity has made this one-time hothead limp. (Maybe the Viagra wasn’t really such a bad idea.)
That hothead is still there -- you can hear it in the voice-over. That growl still booms and those eyes still dart. That’s why, when Rock sighs that he needs to stop complaining about the things he doesn’t have and appreciating the things that he does, it feels like such a cop out. You expect that kind of thing from Eric Rohmer, but from Chris Rock? Maybe fidelity isn’t such a great idea after all.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
