Ze Frenchies, zey are everywhere this year!
Well, what can I say? If you can't find a decent movie in English, you have to turn somewhere. Last year, it was Sweden. This year, France.
The Hedgehog is a neat little French film about a building full of rich people that is managed by a grumpy, frumpy concierge. Well, really, it's about the 11-year-old daughter of one of the rich families, and her countdown to killing herself on her twelfth birthday.
I know, French, right?
It's dark, obviously, but—how to put this?—childishly so. I don't mean that as an insult: Paloma is a child, maybe a future "goth" or "emo" or whatever, but her grasp of the significance of things is distinctly childish. The upshot is that you have this dichotomy of knowing that she's perfectly capable of killing herself and intent on doing it, and at the same time being amused by her thought processes. Bemusement, to use the word correctly.
The story begins with her making this decision, but the catalyst for the subsequent adventures begin with the death of one of the tenants in her building, and the appearance of a new tenant, Kakuro Ozu. This elderly Japanese fellow clearly likes Paloma, but more importantly to the story, he has an eye for the apartment's concierge.
It's helpful to realize that, apparently, the concierge of a wealthy building is rather low on the totem pole. At one point she exclaims that she's the janitor (or so the translation has it). Point is, she's way down on the social scale, expected to be a coarse woman who watches soaps all day long and to be generally unnoticed by the upper crust clientele.
Our movie concierge is a frowsy, frumpy, crotchety old woman, immediately off-putting to all who meet her, except for one little thing. When Kakuro asks about the family that lived there before and the agent (that's probably not who she is, but that's who would do that here) says they were a happy family, Renée (the concierge) says "Happy families are all alike."
To which Kakuro, naturally adds, "Every unhappy family is unhappy in it's own way."
OK, I'm not going to pretend I've read Anna Karenina, but I recognized the quote. If they'd quoted from Crime and Punishment, I'd've been all over that.
And so the movie is basically about how the two of them form an unlikely bond through a love of Russian literature. Also, how Paloma's ennui is lifted, sort of, by watching this. (She actually curses her luck of finally having something interesting happen just as she's about to end it all.)
The three principals are incredibly appealing which contributes greatly to this movie's watchability. The characters are strongly written and the acting has a certain je ne sais qua. (That's French for "I'm too lazy to come up with a better joke".) Togo Igawa projects a quiet dignity as the charming widower, and Garance Le Guillermic does the angsty pre-teen with a subtle depth that makes her likable throughout.
I mean, that's a real potential landmine: Though she's young, Paloma is much in the mold of the rebellious teenager, and lord knows they can be insufferable to watch—even when you're one yourself. My father thought The Breakfast Clubbers were a little whiny. I couldn't figure out why James Dean was pissed off all the time. It's not that they don't make good observations, it's that the observations tend to be incomplete or shallow, which makes the subsequent arrogance (to repeat myself) insufferable.
Paloma is still a child, and her mother has spent her whole life indulging her neuroses. Her older sister is monstrously self-important and self-involved. Dad is feeble and placating without being engaged. The audience's heart goes out to her, naturally, but they manage to keep empathy even when Paloma seems a little cruel.
Which happens.
Josiane Balasko, as the concierge (and the titular hedgehog), is the key to making it all work. She really makes herself unattractive. Not in that Hollywood, slap-a-pair-of-glasses-onto-Kathy-Ireland way, either. And it's not just skin deep: There's an unhappiness, a little bitterness, prickliness to it all.
Her transformation is amazing. Not her physical transformation. She does get a makeover, and it helps, but it's very understated. But when you first catch a glimpse of happiness, or warmth, or even joy on her face, it's a moving experience.
Balasko has been playing homely middle-aged women for 20 years at least, since she played Gerard Depardiu's lover in Too Beautiful For You. But some time before that, I'm pretty sure she was a French hottie, romantic-lead-with-occasional-nude-scene type.
I mention this for a couple of reasons. One, I often wax poetic on these pages about the way the French let their women age, and how I think it's far more attractive than the botoxed/tightened/implanted look of the American never-get-old style. This is a weird case of that, in that Balasko isn't an Isabelle Huppert or an Isabelle Adjani (who are peers), yet there is a respect afforded her that I can almost not imagine in an American film.
The other thing is that I can't imagine—can't think of a single American hottie in a similar career path: Used to be hot, now plays homely. Mostly they'll do anything to stave off aging. Like, say, Morgan Fairchild or Victoria Principal. I could see Nancy Allen maybe doing it, except she's aged more gracefully than either of the aforementioned.
Maybe a propos of nothing. It's a remarkable performance on its own, but seems amazing given the context.
Anyway, The Boy was once again able to overcome his loathing of all things French to enjoy this film. His main comment was something like "it got French at the end, but it didn't go full French". And this is true.
Worth seeing.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Monday, August 22, 2011
The Help
Spunky young wannabe journalist "Skeeter" (Emma Stone) returns to her small town in Alabama looking for some kind of entreé into the world of writershipitude, and ends up discovering a rich vein of stories by the colored help of the town's middle class families.
You know who should be crying over this?
Lindsay Lohan.
I mean, seriously: Crazy Stupid Love, Friends With Benefits, Easy A, Zombieland, this movie—a share of those probably should have gone to the Lohan, but for the whole life-is-a-trainwreck thing. She's sort of the unwritten meta-tragedy here.
And completely off-topic. The mind, it plays tricks.
This movie is, dare I say, a chick flick. And, at nearly two-and-a-half hours, it's long. It's also dangerously "socially relevant" and Baby Boomer pander-y, taking place in the early '60s.
Nigh miraculously, it all works. It wasn't till the end of the film that I realized how long it was getting and both the Boy and the Flower sat through it without complaint. The acting is all solid, the music has the right mix, and the pacing is lively.
This is one of those reviews where I don't say much about the actual events that unfold in the movie, even though you could probably take ten minutes to guess them all from a light outline. Well, most of them; there are probably a few surprises in there.
The movie does a very good job of drawing the characters and granting them their frailties. There are no "magic negros" and it's not really (as it might first seem) about the white (wo)man coming to set them free. It's also not about how bad white folk are, though there's plenty of bad behavior from them. The black women seem to less ill-behaved, but one could see this clearly as a function of not having much free time.
What I'm getting at is that it navigates the historical minefield of race relations—and more importantly, for the sake of the moviegoing audience, the cinematic minefield of portrayal of race.
If there's one perhaps politically correct oddity, it's a near complete absence of black men. Though the only white men of significance are those who interact with our intrepid journalist.
It's a chick flick. If Bridesmaids is the chick-flick-as-comedy, The Help is chick-flick-as-historical fiction.
It's actually kind of reassuring. There need to be good chick flicks.
There's Oscar scuttlebutt—fairly—and lots of talk about how the movie is racist—predictably. I've heard a lot of research went into the source book, and I tend to believe that, but there is a fair amount of wish fulfillment here, too. There wasn't such a book, as far as I know, and the movie can feel a little pat in its resolution.
But there's nothing wrong with that. It's not as extreme as, say, La Vita E Bella or Dances with Wolves, and it's a grand Hollywood tradition to give the audience an upbeat, if not exactly happy, ending. Writer/director Tate Taylor has achieved something well above par here, something worthy of recognition.
And Lindsay Lohan should be dying, watching Emma Stone take a swing at a pitch she could have had, and knock it out of the park.
You know who should be crying over this?
Lindsay Lohan.
I mean, seriously: Crazy Stupid Love, Friends With Benefits, Easy A, Zombieland, this movie—a share of those probably should have gone to the Lohan, but for the whole life-is-a-trainwreck thing. She's sort of the unwritten meta-tragedy here.
And completely off-topic. The mind, it plays tricks.
This movie is, dare I say, a chick flick. And, at nearly two-and-a-half hours, it's long. It's also dangerously "socially relevant" and Baby Boomer pander-y, taking place in the early '60s.
Nigh miraculously, it all works. It wasn't till the end of the film that I realized how long it was getting and both the Boy and the Flower sat through it without complaint. The acting is all solid, the music has the right mix, and the pacing is lively.
This is one of those reviews where I don't say much about the actual events that unfold in the movie, even though you could probably take ten minutes to guess them all from a light outline. Well, most of them; there are probably a few surprises in there.
The movie does a very good job of drawing the characters and granting them their frailties. There are no "magic negros" and it's not really (as it might first seem) about the white (wo)man coming to set them free. It's also not about how bad white folk are, though there's plenty of bad behavior from them. The black women seem to less ill-behaved, but one could see this clearly as a function of not having much free time.
What I'm getting at is that it navigates the historical minefield of race relations—and more importantly, for the sake of the moviegoing audience, the cinematic minefield of portrayal of race.
If there's one perhaps politically correct oddity, it's a near complete absence of black men. Though the only white men of significance are those who interact with our intrepid journalist.
It's a chick flick. If Bridesmaids is the chick-flick-as-comedy, The Help is chick-flick-as-historical fiction.
It's actually kind of reassuring. There need to be good chick flicks.
There's Oscar scuttlebutt—fairly—and lots of talk about how the movie is racist—predictably. I've heard a lot of research went into the source book, and I tend to believe that, but there is a fair amount of wish fulfillment here, too. There wasn't such a book, as far as I know, and the movie can feel a little pat in its resolution.
But there's nothing wrong with that. It's not as extreme as, say, La Vita E Bella or Dances with Wolves, and it's a grand Hollywood tradition to give the audience an upbeat, if not exactly happy, ending. Writer/director Tate Taylor has achieved something well above par here, something worthy of recognition.
And Lindsay Lohan should be dying, watching Emma Stone take a swing at a pitch she could have had, and knock it out of the park.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Rio
I couldn't get the Flower to go see Rio with me, but after it had been playing for four months, the Barb realized she hadn't had any popcorn lately and when she pressured me into taking her to see something, Rio was still playing.
For a movie that's been playing for four months, I expected better.
It's not bad. It's even good. Just not very good. Not very anything, even. The animation is good, of course, but nothing spectacular. Actually, the animation is probably the strongest part: It has a nice subtlety to it (except for an early scene where the girl's hair is blowing in the wind the way nobody's hair blows except in cartoons).
The story is pretty strong, too. A cerulean macaw is transported to Minnesota where its found by a nebbishy young girl who raises it for the next fifteen years. As an adult, a Brazilian ornithologist comes to her bookstore and says that Blu (the macaw) is almost the last of his kind, and that he needs to mate with the last female to keep the species going.
Linda, the bookish girl (Leslie Mann), is not thrilled with this idea, and neither is Blu (Jesse Eisenberg), who is just as nebbishy and domesticated as his owner. They're even less thrilled when the female macaw Jewel (Anne Hathaway) is a feral, unfriendly creature focused on escape.
The birds are immediately captured by smugglers and this leads to a kind of buddy picture with Blu and Jewel trying to find their way to freedom.
So. Cute.
But not that cute. Not in the sense of, say, Despicable Me, which was in danger of being too cute (but pulled back). It's also not that clever like, say, a Ratatouille. It has a passel of animal characters voiced by celebrities that are instantly forgettable. Even now, I know there was a fat bird and a skinny bird and a toucan, but I couldn't tell one from the other.
This movie takes stunt casting to the extreme. Eisenberg and Hathaway could've been Cera and Bynes or Mintz-Plasse and Gomez. In fact, I kind of think maybe they wanted Cera, because Eisenberg sounds like he's doing a nicer, wimpier version of the character he usually plays. Jane Lynch and Wanda Sykes are in here as a couple of geese--for one 30 second scene.
It's, like, why?
The one truly standout voice is done by Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords.
Amidst the passel of forgettable characters are a few desultory musical numbers. I don't even remember how many. You're not going to be whistling tunes from this after leaving the theater. I was actually forgetting the songs as they were being sung. Which was sort of disturbing in a Memento way.
At one point, Blu has a tantrum and says he hates samba because it all sounds alike. Yeah. Well, at least in this movie?
The score by John Powell overall is actually good, though, as is the song he co-wrote with Powell and performed as the movie's villain. But it's an expository character piece that is never again referenced in the rest of the film.
You can do this sort of thing and still be very successful if you pull it out in some other fashion: Being very funny for example (nope) or having a lot of thrilling, suspenseful moments (better).
One of the things I've noticed lately is that animators will take an idea from a Pixar flick and run with it in such a way that it works on a new level. For example, the minions of Despicable Me are very reminiscent of the green alien dudes of the Toy Story series. (Their intonations, their tendency to do things en masse, etc.) But Despicable Me takes it to a higher level, imbuing the minions with individual personalities and basically providing fodder for humor whenever things threaten to get too slow or serious.
The penguins from Madagascar are—well, I can't remember where they're derived from, but I remember thinking how cliché they were at the time, but they also provide a lot of interest for an otherwise plain movie. (Though the rather original King Julian and his entourage are significant.)
This movie has a monkey crew reminiscent of the penguins, but they're bad guys. So they're not very funny and they're kind of creepy, and they don't have any personality.
There are other weird things, too. George Lopez plays a family-man toucan (I think) who uses the macaw's predicament to get out of the metaphorical house, but later on lectures to Blu on how he's going back to his family rather than enjoying Carnival.
Why? Was that something Blu needed to learn? Was Blu in danger of turning to a life of fleeting carnal pleasures? Blu can't even make it with the last female (cerulean macaw) on earth!
You put enough of these things together and it comes out like mush.
But again, the core parts (story, animation, voice acting) are all solid, just never really taking flight (ironically, wah-wah).
When I asked the Barb if she liked it, she said "Of course!" (And aren't you a moron for asking?)
"So, it was good?"
No dignifying that with a response.
"Did you have a favorite part?"
"Yes."
...
...
"Well, what was it?"
"When Blu was a baby."
OK, so she liked the first 3 minutes. And the popcorn. I dunno. You figure it out. Can't wait till she's a teenager.
For a movie that's been playing for four months, I expected better.
It's not bad. It's even good. Just not very good. Not very anything, even. The animation is good, of course, but nothing spectacular. Actually, the animation is probably the strongest part: It has a nice subtlety to it (except for an early scene where the girl's hair is blowing in the wind the way nobody's hair blows except in cartoons).
The story is pretty strong, too. A cerulean macaw is transported to Minnesota where its found by a nebbishy young girl who raises it for the next fifteen years. As an adult, a Brazilian ornithologist comes to her bookstore and says that Blu (the macaw) is almost the last of his kind, and that he needs to mate with the last female to keep the species going.
Linda, the bookish girl (Leslie Mann), is not thrilled with this idea, and neither is Blu (Jesse Eisenberg), who is just as nebbishy and domesticated as his owner. They're even less thrilled when the female macaw Jewel (Anne Hathaway) is a feral, unfriendly creature focused on escape.
The birds are immediately captured by smugglers and this leads to a kind of buddy picture with Blu and Jewel trying to find their way to freedom.
So. Cute.
But not that cute. Not in the sense of, say, Despicable Me, which was in danger of being too cute (but pulled back). It's also not that clever like, say, a Ratatouille. It has a passel of animal characters voiced by celebrities that are instantly forgettable. Even now, I know there was a fat bird and a skinny bird and a toucan, but I couldn't tell one from the other.
This movie takes stunt casting to the extreme. Eisenberg and Hathaway could've been Cera and Bynes or Mintz-Plasse and Gomez. In fact, I kind of think maybe they wanted Cera, because Eisenberg sounds like he's doing a nicer, wimpier version of the character he usually plays. Jane Lynch and Wanda Sykes are in here as a couple of geese--for one 30 second scene.
It's, like, why?
The one truly standout voice is done by Jemaine Clement of Flight of the Conchords.
Amidst the passel of forgettable characters are a few desultory musical numbers. I don't even remember how many. You're not going to be whistling tunes from this after leaving the theater. I was actually forgetting the songs as they were being sung. Which was sort of disturbing in a Memento way.
At one point, Blu has a tantrum and says he hates samba because it all sounds alike. Yeah. Well, at least in this movie?
The score by John Powell overall is actually good, though, as is the song he co-wrote with Powell and performed as the movie's villain. But it's an expository character piece that is never again referenced in the rest of the film.
You can do this sort of thing and still be very successful if you pull it out in some other fashion: Being very funny for example (nope) or having a lot of thrilling, suspenseful moments (better).
One of the things I've noticed lately is that animators will take an idea from a Pixar flick and run with it in such a way that it works on a new level. For example, the minions of Despicable Me are very reminiscent of the green alien dudes of the Toy Story series. (Their intonations, their tendency to do things en masse, etc.) But Despicable Me takes it to a higher level, imbuing the minions with individual personalities and basically providing fodder for humor whenever things threaten to get too slow or serious.
The penguins from Madagascar are—well, I can't remember where they're derived from, but I remember thinking how cliché they were at the time, but they also provide a lot of interest for an otherwise plain movie. (Though the rather original King Julian and his entourage are significant.)
This movie has a monkey crew reminiscent of the penguins, but they're bad guys. So they're not very funny and they're kind of creepy, and they don't have any personality.
There are other weird things, too. George Lopez plays a family-man toucan (I think) who uses the macaw's predicament to get out of the metaphorical house, but later on lectures to Blu on how he's going back to his family rather than enjoying Carnival.
Why? Was that something Blu needed to learn? Was Blu in danger of turning to a life of fleeting carnal pleasures? Blu can't even make it with the last female (cerulean macaw) on earth!
You put enough of these things together and it comes out like mush.
But again, the core parts (story, animation, voice acting) are all solid, just never really taking flight (ironically, wah-wah).
When I asked the Barb if she liked it, she said "Of course!" (And aren't you a moron for asking?)
"So, it was good?"
No dignifying that with a response.
"Did you have a favorite part?"
"Yes."
...
...
"Well, what was it?"
"When Blu was a baby."
OK, so she liked the first 3 minutes. And the popcorn. I dunno. You figure it out. Can't wait till she's a teenager.
Point Blank (À bout portant)
The Boy and I love suspense/thrillers. Hitchcock fans to the bitter end. And, let's face it: If a movie is a thriller, the one thing you know is that it's not going to be boring. Right? Except, of course, when it's mis-labeled melodrama. Which it often is. Especially if it's a foreign film. Especially French.
But the French can make some good potboilers and, happy to say, this movie, Point Blank, is one of them. It's a simple (Hitchcockian) premise: A nurse on duty (male nurse, it's France, remember) saves a man from an assassination attempt, and ends up being a pawn in a game of dirty cops and robbers.
The action is breakneck. The twists are twisty but not overblown. We get some character development as our hero Sam (Gilles Lelouche) must transform from a mild-mannered good guy nurse into a something a little grittier. This actually is worth a pause: He doesn't become, Police Academy-style, a complete caricature of an action hero. He barely qualifies at all, really: He just gets more desperate and it's more like we see the quality of his character (showcased early on in a normal situation, that's foreshadowing, people) proven over the course of the adventure.
And it doesn't really let up till the end, which involves a chaotic brawl inside a police station.
Fun!
A couple of points right at the end made me wonder if they were going to get all dark and French and stuff, but they avoided that for a nice climax and satisfying denouement.
Good stuff. Not weighty or serious, but the fast, fun, quick movies (this clocks in at 84 minutes, including credits) aren't as easy to do as people think, clearly.
The Boy and I liked it. The Boy even mentioned it a couple days later as being good. And he hates the French.
But the French can make some good potboilers and, happy to say, this movie, Point Blank, is one of them. It's a simple (Hitchcockian) premise: A nurse on duty (male nurse, it's France, remember) saves a man from an assassination attempt, and ends up being a pawn in a game of dirty cops and robbers.
The action is breakneck. The twists are twisty but not overblown. We get some character development as our hero Sam (Gilles Lelouche) must transform from a mild-mannered good guy nurse into a something a little grittier. This actually is worth a pause: He doesn't become, Police Academy-style, a complete caricature of an action hero. He barely qualifies at all, really: He just gets more desperate and it's more like we see the quality of his character (showcased early on in a normal situation, that's foreshadowing, people) proven over the course of the adventure.
And it doesn't really let up till the end, which involves a chaotic brawl inside a police station.
Fun!
A couple of points right at the end made me wonder if they were going to get all dark and French and stuff, but they avoided that for a nice climax and satisfying denouement.
Good stuff. Not weighty or serious, but the fast, fun, quick movies (this clocks in at 84 minutes, including credits) aren't as easy to do as people think, clearly.
The Boy and I liked it. The Boy even mentioned it a couple days later as being good. And he hates the French.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Sarah's Key (Elle s'appelait Sarah)
Gendarmes pound on the door of a French apartment in WWII to collect the Jews who live there, and a little girl thinks to save her brother's life by locking him in a closet. The rest of the family is taken away and the little girl desperately tries to get back, or to send someone, to fetch him.
So begins the French film, Sarah's Key, which is this story and also the story of a journalist (Kristin Scott-Thomas) who moves into that apartment with her family 60 years later, who happens to be researching the story for a magazine article.
The coincidence bugged me a bit, but then it occurred to me that with tens of thousands of Jews having been rounded up in France, it's not as huge a stretch as it first seems that there'd be a connection, even an intimate one.
Mélusine Mayance plays the eponymous Sarah, and her struggle to free her brother from the closet is suspenseful, moving, riveting and heart-breaking as Sarah's story crosses those of other children.
Julia Jarmond's story is necessarily far more low-key. She's obsessed by the story, moving into her husband's family apartment in Paris, and newly (surprisingly) pregnant with a child her husband doesn't want.
The Boy and I deconstructed it immediately: The climax is a little past the middle of the film. We find out what happens to Sarah as a child, and follow Julia as she tries to find out her fate as an adult. This doesn't have the drive of the first part of the film, and—well, it's all sort of denouement.
As I've noted, when the French aren't beating up America, they're beating up themselves, and there's a little of that here, though not as much as you might think. (Not like, say, the moving Indigenes.) But there's an undeniable triviality of modern life compared to World War II and the Holocaust. The Boy said at the end he was reminded of that scene in Crazy, Stupid Love (the giddy "It's just a divorce!" celebration).
And yet. For both of us, the movie seemed to get better and better in the ensuing hours. It's a tricky (some would say dangerous) juxtaposition, and the reviews for this movie indicate that the critics were less likely to accept it than the general audience. Maybe this is because Julia is an American and she (rightly) has a certain moral concern over the possibility her French in-laws may have acquired property from Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and American moral superiority isn't big among our elite these days.
But maybe it worked for us because we're humbled by the experience. The events of our lives are happily trivial compared to those of who came before us, thanks to their efforts. And maybe we could relate to Julia and her peers trying to find some meaning at the peril of re-prioritizing things in favor of what's important rather than what's convenient.
Excellently acted throughout, of course. Beautifully rendered in two different styles (for the flashback and the modern times). Effective, understated music. If I am jaded about Holocaust movies occasionally, this one had a different, challenging aspect to it that made it worthy of viewing.
So begins the French film, Sarah's Key, which is this story and also the story of a journalist (Kristin Scott-Thomas) who moves into that apartment with her family 60 years later, who happens to be researching the story for a magazine article.
The coincidence bugged me a bit, but then it occurred to me that with tens of thousands of Jews having been rounded up in France, it's not as huge a stretch as it first seems that there'd be a connection, even an intimate one.
Mélusine Mayance plays the eponymous Sarah, and her struggle to free her brother from the closet is suspenseful, moving, riveting and heart-breaking as Sarah's story crosses those of other children.
Julia Jarmond's story is necessarily far more low-key. She's obsessed by the story, moving into her husband's family apartment in Paris, and newly (surprisingly) pregnant with a child her husband doesn't want.
The Boy and I deconstructed it immediately: The climax is a little past the middle of the film. We find out what happens to Sarah as a child, and follow Julia as she tries to find out her fate as an adult. This doesn't have the drive of the first part of the film, and—well, it's all sort of denouement.
As I've noted, when the French aren't beating up America, they're beating up themselves, and there's a little of that here, though not as much as you might think. (Not like, say, the moving Indigenes.) But there's an undeniable triviality of modern life compared to World War II and the Holocaust. The Boy said at the end he was reminded of that scene in Crazy, Stupid Love (the giddy "It's just a divorce!" celebration).
And yet. For both of us, the movie seemed to get better and better in the ensuing hours. It's a tricky (some would say dangerous) juxtaposition, and the reviews for this movie indicate that the critics were less likely to accept it than the general audience. Maybe this is because Julia is an American and she (rightly) has a certain moral concern over the possibility her French in-laws may have acquired property from Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and American moral superiority isn't big among our elite these days.
But maybe it worked for us because we're humbled by the experience. The events of our lives are happily trivial compared to those of who came before us, thanks to their efforts. And maybe we could relate to Julia and her peers trying to find some meaning at the peril of re-prioritizing things in favor of what's important rather than what's convenient.
Excellently acted throughout, of course. Beautifully rendered in two different styles (for the flashback and the modern times). Effective, understated music. If I am jaded about Holocaust movies occasionally, this one had a different, challenging aspect to it that made it worthy of viewing.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Cowboys and Aliens
The inestimable @Darcysport, who's sort of become my conservative conscience as far as movie-going goes, goaded me a little bit about last week's Cowboys and Aliens comment, pointing out that Ed Morrissey liked it.
I retorted that I knew that, but I thought his whole equating the holocaust with KFC rendered his judgment questionable.
I can be obtuse that way.
Anyway, I knew Morrissey had liked it, and I don't know much about his taste in movies, but it got me thinking: What if some of the negative reviews had not been based on the actual quality of the movie per se (that's Latin for "I'm a pretentious dork") but on themes that might be regarded as right-wing, and therefore not worthy of any praise?
We have a winnah!
OK, let's say it up front. This movie is what it says on the label: Cowboys (check) and aliens (check). A mysterious stranger wanders into a town on its way to being a ghost town, and runs afoul of the cattle baron with a maniac kid, when the western clichés are interrupted by an alien attack.
And it works.
There's some stupid here, necessarily. But way less stupid than you might expect. Way less than (say) Independence Day. Allowing for the fact that any alien invasion movie is going to have to have some stupid in order for earthlings to have a chance at fighting back, this movie does a good job of setting up the seeds of the aliens' potential failure.
Director Jon Favreau does what he does best, I think: Deliver more than you expect from some thin material (see Elf). And how does he do this?
Primarily, he refuses to pad things out. Especially with summer blockbusters, you get lots of padding. Movies tend to be padding between special effects, and then the special effects are padded! (Think the Star Wars prequels.) Every scene here has a purpose: characterization, plot development and even the occasional special effect.
The effects are light in general. Favreau seems to have opted for filming real places instead of a bunch of people on a green screen, and the plot is pretty straightforward, too. So what you get is a lot of characterization.
I don't get why action directors don't figure this out: Action sequences (and special effects) are nothing if you don't care about the characters. Super 8 knew this, but it lampshaded it to the point where the characterization felt forced.
Here you have The Mysterious Badass, The Upright Sheriff and his Ward, The Evil Cattle Baron, The Preacher, The Nebbishy Saloon Owner and his Hot Wife, The Indians—pretty much stock genre characters. But each one is imbued with a certain, unique life by their time onscreen, no matter how short.
The Outlaws and The Indians, e.g., have very little screen time between them, but you can tell 'em apart with the short time they have. Favreau did the same thing with Ironman, you may recall: If there's a character on-screen, they're not just filling in a plot point or being sucked into a special effect. The characterization is positively thick, with The Hero being layered in a Jason Bourne kind of style and The Evil Cattle Baron being by turns merciless, racist, ruthless but also with a toughness that seems to come from an almost sentimental place.
In other words, there's something to hang your hat on.
It doesn't hurt that the lead is played by Daniel Craig, who lacks the bulk of a John Wayne, but is damned convincing as a wiry, tough bastard. There is one shot that reminds me so strongly of a comic book image—I don't read a lot of comic books but I can't remember where I've seen it—that I completely overlooked how impossibly well his clothes fit him.
While Craig does excellently, Harrison Ford almost steals the show as the Evil Cattle Baron. It's a little weird to see him as a bad guy, but he's more complicated. You could argue, even, that he's the main character, since his story has the most clearly defined arc. (Craig's arc is there, but it's subtler.)
Olivia Wilde is about a million times more appealing than she was in Tron. Her role is a bit odd and she manages to bring a real warmth to it completely missing from Legacy. Sam Rockwell plays the nebbishy bartender while Paul Dano is the snotty son of the cattle baron—a role that probably would have gone to Rockwell ten years ago.
Clancy Brown plays the preacher man, once again. Seems like he's a preacher a lot, though the only thing I can swear to offhand is his role as the evil radio preacher in "Carnivalé".
It's his character that really gets up and slaps you in the face with the movie's right-wingedness.
It's not really a right-wing movie, though, any more than Iron Man was. It's just that, working in a genre where traditional American values are celebrated, it's just going to come off that way. And I think that's why it rubs some folks the wrong way.
And being rubbed the wrong way, they come up with stupid other reasons for not liking it, like "What do the aliens want with gold?" Really? That's your idea of a plot hole. We're told early on that gold is as rare on their world as on ours. What more do you need? A giant gold space laser?
Sheesh.
This confirms my thesis that most people (including, say, Roger Ebert) react to movies on a gut level, then just sort of backfill the reasons why they hate something or like something to make it seem logical.
That's why I try to let you know my biases and tastes.
Anyway, this movie is full of western tropes that seem remarkably right-wing now. The Preacher is a decent, tough man who tries to help out the bartender. The Indians are savages (though we do get a little Indian medicine magic). The gun is celebrated, whether six-shooter, Winchester rifle or alien laser doo-hickey.
The Cattle Baron is a racist, but he has a good heart.
I don't know why that last should be "right-wing" except that political correctness seems to require certain things be signifiers of pure evil. Things like racism, or smoking.
There's some smoking, too. The hero smokes! Primarily to look cool to his friends!
So, yeah, I'm willing to guess that this stuff shaved a few points of the ratings.
We all liked it. Me, The Boy, The Flower. We weren't really blown away, but we agreed it was fun and under-rated.
I retorted that I knew that, but I thought his whole equating the holocaust with KFC rendered his judgment questionable.
I can be obtuse that way.
Anyway, I knew Morrissey had liked it, and I don't know much about his taste in movies, but it got me thinking: What if some of the negative reviews had not been based on the actual quality of the movie per se (that's Latin for "I'm a pretentious dork") but on themes that might be regarded as right-wing, and therefore not worthy of any praise?
We have a winnah!
OK, let's say it up front. This movie is what it says on the label: Cowboys (check) and aliens (check). A mysterious stranger wanders into a town on its way to being a ghost town, and runs afoul of the cattle baron with a maniac kid, when the western clichés are interrupted by an alien attack.
And it works.
There's some stupid here, necessarily. But way less stupid than you might expect. Way less than (say) Independence Day. Allowing for the fact that any alien invasion movie is going to have to have some stupid in order for earthlings to have a chance at fighting back, this movie does a good job of setting up the seeds of the aliens' potential failure.
Director Jon Favreau does what he does best, I think: Deliver more than you expect from some thin material (see Elf). And how does he do this?
Primarily, he refuses to pad things out. Especially with summer blockbusters, you get lots of padding. Movies tend to be padding between special effects, and then the special effects are padded! (Think the Star Wars prequels.) Every scene here has a purpose: characterization, plot development and even the occasional special effect.
The effects are light in general. Favreau seems to have opted for filming real places instead of a bunch of people on a green screen, and the plot is pretty straightforward, too. So what you get is a lot of characterization.
I don't get why action directors don't figure this out: Action sequences (and special effects) are nothing if you don't care about the characters. Super 8 knew this, but it lampshaded it to the point where the characterization felt forced.
Here you have The Mysterious Badass, The Upright Sheriff and his Ward, The Evil Cattle Baron, The Preacher, The Nebbishy Saloon Owner and his Hot Wife, The Indians—pretty much stock genre characters. But each one is imbued with a certain, unique life by their time onscreen, no matter how short.
The Outlaws and The Indians, e.g., have very little screen time between them, but you can tell 'em apart with the short time they have. Favreau did the same thing with Ironman, you may recall: If there's a character on-screen, they're not just filling in a plot point or being sucked into a special effect. The characterization is positively thick, with The Hero being layered in a Jason Bourne kind of style and The Evil Cattle Baron being by turns merciless, racist, ruthless but also with a toughness that seems to come from an almost sentimental place.
In other words, there's something to hang your hat on.
It doesn't hurt that the lead is played by Daniel Craig, who lacks the bulk of a John Wayne, but is damned convincing as a wiry, tough bastard. There is one shot that reminds me so strongly of a comic book image—I don't read a lot of comic books but I can't remember where I've seen it—that I completely overlooked how impossibly well his clothes fit him.
While Craig does excellently, Harrison Ford almost steals the show as the Evil Cattle Baron. It's a little weird to see him as a bad guy, but he's more complicated. You could argue, even, that he's the main character, since his story has the most clearly defined arc. (Craig's arc is there, but it's subtler.)
Olivia Wilde is about a million times more appealing than she was in Tron. Her role is a bit odd and she manages to bring a real warmth to it completely missing from Legacy. Sam Rockwell plays the nebbishy bartender while Paul Dano is the snotty son of the cattle baron—a role that probably would have gone to Rockwell ten years ago.
Clancy Brown plays the preacher man, once again. Seems like he's a preacher a lot, though the only thing I can swear to offhand is his role as the evil radio preacher in "Carnivalé".
It's his character that really gets up and slaps you in the face with the movie's right-wingedness.
It's not really a right-wing movie, though, any more than Iron Man was. It's just that, working in a genre where traditional American values are celebrated, it's just going to come off that way. And I think that's why it rubs some folks the wrong way.
And being rubbed the wrong way, they come up with stupid other reasons for not liking it, like "What do the aliens want with gold?" Really? That's your idea of a plot hole. We're told early on that gold is as rare on their world as on ours. What more do you need? A giant gold space laser?
Sheesh.
This confirms my thesis that most people (including, say, Roger Ebert) react to movies on a gut level, then just sort of backfill the reasons why they hate something or like something to make it seem logical.
That's why I try to let you know my biases and tastes.
Anyway, this movie is full of western tropes that seem remarkably right-wing now. The Preacher is a decent, tough man who tries to help out the bartender. The Indians are savages (though we do get a little Indian medicine magic). The gun is celebrated, whether six-shooter, Winchester rifle or alien laser doo-hickey.
The Cattle Baron is a racist, but he has a good heart.
I don't know why that last should be "right-wing" except that political correctness seems to require certain things be signifiers of pure evil. Things like racism, or smoking.
There's some smoking, too. The hero smokes! Primarily to look cool to his friends!
So, yeah, I'm willing to guess that this stuff shaved a few points of the ratings.
We all liked it. Me, The Boy, The Flower. We weren't really blown away, but we agreed it was fun and under-rated.
Monday, August 1, 2011
Crazy, Stupid, Love.
Cowboys and Aliens wasn't really getting the top notch reviews, and The Boy is a hard sell on "high concept" movies anyway, so I took him and The Flower to see the new Steve Carell flick Crazy, Stupid, Love. And that punctuation (including the period) is part of the title.
It's a simple premise: Middle-aged, nerdy Cal and his wife Emily are splitting up, and Cal ends up under the tutelage of Jacob, a top-notch player who shows him how to score women. Meanwhile, Jacob has his eye on the sexually modest Hanna, and 17-year-old babysitter Jessica has a crush on Cal while fending off the advances of Cal's 13-year-old son Robbie.
So, of course, it's not the plot but the execution.
This is a fairly light movie. Carell is pleasant, of course, and likable even in his wimpy mode, and he's supported by Julianne Moore, who seems pleasingly vulnerable in this role. Ryan Gosling plays Jacob, managing to be charming and strong without seeming sleazy, sort of doing the opposite of his Lars and the Real Girl role. Analeigh Tipton (Jessica) and Jonah Bobo (Robbie) are both very appealing, as well, and the supporting cast includes Kevin Bacon, Beth Littleford and John Carroll Lynch. Oh, and Emma Stone as "good girl" Hannah and Liza Lapira as her slutty friend are a delight.
The comedy moves pretty quickly and consistently, too, with no serious lags or lulls. It's not entirely fluff, as we do see some of the consequences of (multiple, frequent) casual sex, but obviously not the worst ones (or it would cease to be a comedy, most likely). It highlights some of the crazy, stupid aspects—but not really of love so much as sex and infatuation.
There are some technical issues. One of the plot points involves Jacob's strategy of always buying a girl a drink, for example, when everyone knows you don't buy a girl a drink. This sets up a nice awkward moment for Carell to riff on, though, so we can overlook it, along with some of the other aspects of Jacob's "game" that seem improbable.
A more serious issue, to my mind, is the ease with which Carell's character, Cal, falls into his new lifestyle. Given the sort of person he is portrayed as being, his history as we learn it, and his reaction to circumstances later on, I don't know if I really buy that. I also don't know if the movie's resolution makes sense, given all that.
There's another, less obvious issue that raises its head twice in this movie, with regard to male/female relationships. In both situations (involving different characters), a female becomes unhinged because her relationship with a male didn't work out the way she thought it would.
Now, obviously, this is true to life enough.
In one case, though, we're more inclined to believe that the character is a little unstable, while in the other case, the character is meant to be admirable. But from what we're shown, both cases involve the woman making assumptions that are never stated anywhere, and in both cases we're invited to blame the males for this.
In one case, a one-night stand, this is ridiculous. The other case involves a long-term relationship—but one in which we're given no reason to even understand the woman's attraction to the man, except as a demonstration of her superior character, much less why she would have the expectations of him she does—except, again as a demonstration of her relative superior value.
Not to say I haven't known hot chicks who went for less-than-hot guys because they valued kindness, stability and all the other things that aren't supposed to turn women on, and who didn't end up being just as badly used by them as they would have been by bad boys. But just that the movie doesn't show us any depth, so it sort of looks like women have no responsibility for relationships, men are just supposed to meet their needs (however unspoken), and it's men's fault for not doing so.
Come to think of it, that might have been the over-arching message of the film.
Can't say I approve of that.
But I'm over-analyzing things, I suppose. It's a cute movie, with plenty of laughs. You'll probably enjoy it. Both The Boy and The Flower did, as did I.
There was a distinct shortage of both cowboys and aliens, however.
It's a simple premise: Middle-aged, nerdy Cal and his wife Emily are splitting up, and Cal ends up under the tutelage of Jacob, a top-notch player who shows him how to score women. Meanwhile, Jacob has his eye on the sexually modest Hanna, and 17-year-old babysitter Jessica has a crush on Cal while fending off the advances of Cal's 13-year-old son Robbie.
So, of course, it's not the plot but the execution.
This is a fairly light movie. Carell is pleasant, of course, and likable even in his wimpy mode, and he's supported by Julianne Moore, who seems pleasingly vulnerable in this role. Ryan Gosling plays Jacob, managing to be charming and strong without seeming sleazy, sort of doing the opposite of his Lars and the Real Girl role. Analeigh Tipton (Jessica) and Jonah Bobo (Robbie) are both very appealing, as well, and the supporting cast includes Kevin Bacon, Beth Littleford and John Carroll Lynch. Oh, and Emma Stone as "good girl" Hannah and Liza Lapira as her slutty friend are a delight.
The comedy moves pretty quickly and consistently, too, with no serious lags or lulls. It's not entirely fluff, as we do see some of the consequences of (multiple, frequent) casual sex, but obviously not the worst ones (or it would cease to be a comedy, most likely). It highlights some of the crazy, stupid aspects—but not really of love so much as sex and infatuation.
There are some technical issues. One of the plot points involves Jacob's strategy of always buying a girl a drink, for example, when everyone knows you don't buy a girl a drink. This sets up a nice awkward moment for Carell to riff on, though, so we can overlook it, along with some of the other aspects of Jacob's "game" that seem improbable.
A more serious issue, to my mind, is the ease with which Carell's character, Cal, falls into his new lifestyle. Given the sort of person he is portrayed as being, his history as we learn it, and his reaction to circumstances later on, I don't know if I really buy that. I also don't know if the movie's resolution makes sense, given all that.
There's another, less obvious issue that raises its head twice in this movie, with regard to male/female relationships. In both situations (involving different characters), a female becomes unhinged because her relationship with a male didn't work out the way she thought it would.
Now, obviously, this is true to life enough.
In one case, though, we're more inclined to believe that the character is a little unstable, while in the other case, the character is meant to be admirable. But from what we're shown, both cases involve the woman making assumptions that are never stated anywhere, and in both cases we're invited to blame the males for this.
In one case, a one-night stand, this is ridiculous. The other case involves a long-term relationship—but one in which we're given no reason to even understand the woman's attraction to the man, except as a demonstration of her superior character, much less why she would have the expectations of him she does—except, again as a demonstration of her relative superior value.
Not to say I haven't known hot chicks who went for less-than-hot guys because they valued kindness, stability and all the other things that aren't supposed to turn women on, and who didn't end up being just as badly used by them as they would have been by bad boys. But just that the movie doesn't show us any depth, so it sort of looks like women have no responsibility for relationships, men are just supposed to meet their needs (however unspoken), and it's men's fault for not doing so.
Come to think of it, that might have been the over-arching message of the film.
Can't say I approve of that.
But I'm over-analyzing things, I suppose. It's a cute movie, with plenty of laughs. You'll probably enjoy it. Both The Boy and The Flower did, as did I.
There was a distinct shortage of both cowboys and aliens, however.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
A Better Life
So, this movie about an illegal immigrant gardener living in East L.A. has been hanging around the theaters lately and I really wasn't going to go see it. These things almost always work out the same way, with the good-hearted Latinos being oppressed by the evil gringos or, say, the immigrants teach the repressed white man how to really live.
Meh.
Then @Darcysport mentioned that it was written by Pajamas Media founder Roger Simon.
Meh.
I actually don't know much about Roger Simon. I remember Althouse mocking him mercilessly when he was recruiting bloggers for PJ Media. That was almost six freaking years ago. So, I guess her estimation that they would flounder didn't pan out.
Anyway, I think Simon's shtick is that he's a Hollywood outsider by choice, due to his political conservatism, which in this town sounds like "no one will hire me". Not that I have any insight into his career that IMDB doesn't give.
What I'm getting at is that I wasn't all that enthusiastic going into this thing, with a story by Simon, directed by Chris Weitz (About A Boy) and screenwriter Eric Eason, and a cast of people you maybe have seen around...places...maybe on street corners...
And?
It's a solid movie. It's the sort of movie that people say "Why don't they make movies like that anymore?" only to have you point out that they do, and that they just watched it, you moron!
Though it has been a while.
Carlos is an illegal, living in L.A. for about 15 years, raising his son, Luis, on his own. He wakes up early, gets driven around in a truck by his boss, and does gardening all over the fair City of Angels. He works hard, lives in a mean little hovel in East L.A. where he tends his own mini-garden. He's not relating well to his teenage son, who skips school and runs with a bad crowd.
Pretty standard stuff, right?
Carlos' boss is going to sell the truck and equipment to the highest bidder and take his money to go buy a farm back in Mexico—something he refers to, without irony, as "the American dream". This puts the pressure on Carlos, since he doesn't have the money to buy the truck, and doesn't have the necessary papers to hold on to the truck if he could buy it. (That is, he has no driver's license and if he gets caught, he'll get shipped back to Mexico.) If he doesn't buy it, on the other hand, he's back out on the curb with the other day laborers. (An interesting and accurate depiction of the various strata of illegal society here.)
Meanwhile, Luis is a snotty, spoiled teenaged brat who disdains his father, disdains the day laborers, hates his own poverty and really has no sense of how bad it could be. He is, at least, smart enough to be running with the gangs, but there's an attraction, and it doesn't help that his girlfriend is part of the baddest crime gang in the neighborhood.
Once again, pretty standard stuff, right?
Ah, but it's character, plot, tension, story arc—all the basics covered here.
And it works. Well.
Why? Because it's a depiction of a good man, working hard to get ahead—to the live the American Dream—and the forces arrayed against him are formidable but not insurmountable. Demian Bichir plays Carlos, and he's an excellent everyman.
The whole cast is convincing and authentic feeling, and the (presumably) low budget doesn't work against it.
You care, but more than that, the movie is always engaging you with narrative "effects" a lot of dramatists avoid: Just because this is a serious drama (some say melodrama) doesn't mean it can't have moments of suspense, mystery, action, etc. These enhance the drama, just as drama can enhance those sorts of scenes.
What I'm getting at is that the movie doesn't take your caring for granted, constantly giving you moments to make you care a little bit more. For Luis's character, this is critical, because he's such a tool you feel like slapping him at first. But he gets to have his highs and lows, his moments of glory and, well, inglory, and he evolves as a character.
Given my bent, I'd like to say "This movie shows that socialism (and other forms of big government) ruins everything." Because to my way of thinking, the Carlos' of the world are never an immigration problem. If it weren't for the government offering freebies to illegals and regulating the jobs market so much that they price the native poor out of the jobs immigrants do, I think we'd have a lot less of an issue.
But as much as I'd like to say that's the message of the movie, I can't any more than I could say "The problem with immigration, according to the movie, is the gringos oppressing and exploiting the brown peoples." (Racism, and white people in general, barely make an appearance in the film.)
The point being, the movie is basically politics-free. You can say "Well, that sure is stupid" at various points of the film, but that's just honest observation. Politics gets into the why (like my preferred "why" mentioned above) and the how to fix, and who's to blame, which would make for an insufferable film.
The Flower had a little trouble following it with all the subtitles (the movie slips in and out of Spanish frequently) but she liked it. The Boy really liked it. And I did, too. I was glad we went and glad that a movie like this—on many levels—could be made.
Meh.
Then @Darcysport mentioned that it was written by Pajamas Media founder Roger Simon.
Meh.
I actually don't know much about Roger Simon. I remember Althouse mocking him mercilessly when he was recruiting bloggers for PJ Media. That was almost six freaking years ago. So, I guess her estimation that they would flounder didn't pan out.
Anyway, I think Simon's shtick is that he's a Hollywood outsider by choice, due to his political conservatism, which in this town sounds like "no one will hire me". Not that I have any insight into his career that IMDB doesn't give.
What I'm getting at is that I wasn't all that enthusiastic going into this thing, with a story by Simon, directed by Chris Weitz (About A Boy) and screenwriter Eric Eason, and a cast of people you maybe have seen around...places...maybe on street corners...
And?
It's a solid movie. It's the sort of movie that people say "Why don't they make movies like that anymore?" only to have you point out that they do, and that they just watched it, you moron!
Though it has been a while.
Carlos is an illegal, living in L.A. for about 15 years, raising his son, Luis, on his own. He wakes up early, gets driven around in a truck by his boss, and does gardening all over the fair City of Angels. He works hard, lives in a mean little hovel in East L.A. where he tends his own mini-garden. He's not relating well to his teenage son, who skips school and runs with a bad crowd.
Pretty standard stuff, right?
Carlos' boss is going to sell the truck and equipment to the highest bidder and take his money to go buy a farm back in Mexico—something he refers to, without irony, as "the American dream". This puts the pressure on Carlos, since he doesn't have the money to buy the truck, and doesn't have the necessary papers to hold on to the truck if he could buy it. (That is, he has no driver's license and if he gets caught, he'll get shipped back to Mexico.) If he doesn't buy it, on the other hand, he's back out on the curb with the other day laborers. (An interesting and accurate depiction of the various strata of illegal society here.)
Meanwhile, Luis is a snotty, spoiled teenaged brat who disdains his father, disdains the day laborers, hates his own poverty and really has no sense of how bad it could be. He is, at least, smart enough to be running with the gangs, but there's an attraction, and it doesn't help that his girlfriend is part of the baddest crime gang in the neighborhood.
Once again, pretty standard stuff, right?
Ah, but it's character, plot, tension, story arc—all the basics covered here.
And it works. Well.
Why? Because it's a depiction of a good man, working hard to get ahead—to the live the American Dream—and the forces arrayed against him are formidable but not insurmountable. Demian Bichir plays Carlos, and he's an excellent everyman.
The whole cast is convincing and authentic feeling, and the (presumably) low budget doesn't work against it.
You care, but more than that, the movie is always engaging you with narrative "effects" a lot of dramatists avoid: Just because this is a serious drama (some say melodrama) doesn't mean it can't have moments of suspense, mystery, action, etc. These enhance the drama, just as drama can enhance those sorts of scenes.
What I'm getting at is that the movie doesn't take your caring for granted, constantly giving you moments to make you care a little bit more. For Luis's character, this is critical, because he's such a tool you feel like slapping him at first. But he gets to have his highs and lows, his moments of glory and, well, inglory, and he evolves as a character.
Given my bent, I'd like to say "This movie shows that socialism (and other forms of big government) ruins everything." Because to my way of thinking, the Carlos' of the world are never an immigration problem. If it weren't for the government offering freebies to illegals and regulating the jobs market so much that they price the native poor out of the jobs immigrants do, I think we'd have a lot less of an issue.
But as much as I'd like to say that's the message of the movie, I can't any more than I could say "The problem with immigration, according to the movie, is the gringos oppressing and exploiting the brown peoples." (Racism, and white people in general, barely make an appearance in the film.)
The point being, the movie is basically politics-free. You can say "Well, that sure is stupid" at various points of the film, but that's just honest observation. Politics gets into the why (like my preferred "why" mentioned above) and the how to fix, and who's to blame, which would make for an insufferable film.
The Flower had a little trouble following it with all the subtitles (the movie slips in and out of Spanish frequently) but she liked it. The Boy really liked it. And I did, too. I was glad we went and glad that a movie like this—on many levels—could be made.
Monday, July 18, 2011
Harry Potter And The Last Goddamn Movie
It's over! Hallelujah! After ten years, 19-and-a-half hours and eight movies, There are no more Harry Potter movies to sit through!
Thank God.
Actually, all things considered? This is a very solid series of movies. Especially after the first couple of cutesy-poo Chris Columbus flicks (Sorceror's Stone and Chamber of Secrets). The uneven third flick had some edge and real heart, with Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men) at the helm, and Mike Newell (Prince of Persia) made the silly plot of The Goblet of Fire overlookable.
The last four films (Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, Deathly Hallows I and II) were all done by David Yates who has done a fine job, st least as far as creating watchable movies, I can't speak to faithfulness to the source material.
So, what to say about this one? Well, Ace of Spades lamented, when he heard the last book had been split in to two movies, that there wasn't enough material.
Not a problem. Part 1 moved along briskly, and Part 2 is actually pretty breakneck. There's a lot to wrap up here, and the Big Reveal to be revealed, and what-not.
The Big Reveal isn't going to surprise anyone, I don't think. My kids saw it coming around the fifth movie—well, The Boy did. The Flower was born the year the first one came out so she wasn't even prepared to be surprised by the twist.
Well, that's one reveal. The other reveal—well, that seemed obvious to me from the get-go.
This is not a bad thing, mind you. If they had really been shocking at this point, halfway through the last half of the last book, it would have felt like a cheat. (Though this theory about Neville would've been fun.) Really, for a movie series that's based on a fair amount of slapdashery, the final chapter hangs together and brings things together.
The movie could actually be stitched two the first half to make a seamless four-and-a-half-hour movie (yow!) beginning as it does at the point where Valdemort robs the Elder Wand from the grave. Meanwhile, Harry, Ron and Hermione are off to destroy the horcruxes (the vessels that hold Valdemort's soul and preserve his immortality).
This leads to a bank heist (with shootout!) and then takes them back to a thoroughly occupied Hogwart's (apparently Valdemort thought it would be a good idea to keep two horcruxes in the same place). And thus begins the last stand.
There's not much to say really. At this point, you know whether you're going to see it or not. Are you really going to see 6 1/2 chapters of a story without seeing the last? Although, in fairness, I know a guy who has only seen the last three or four films and enjoyed them.
To the film's, and the series', credit, this isn't the Star Wars prequels or Lord of the Rings, where I really did just see the last ones because I'd seen the first two. The Boy shares my opinion here: While far from a fan, he's been liking these later movies more.
The Flower, on the other hand, hates them. Not that she thinks they're bad, necessarily, but she's sort of picked up on the fact that Rowling basically dumps on Harry. He can't get a break. The Flower doesn't care for that sort of thing. (She hates Charlie Brown, too, for stuff like the ever-escaping football. "The most depressing series ever.")
Her opinion? "It's no Gran Torino, but it wasn't bad!"
High praise, indeed. (Gran Torino is one of her favorite movies and the funniest she's ever seen, she says.)
The movie suffers a bit from a few things. For one thing, if you primarily watch the movies when they come out, you're basically seeing the second half a movie after you got interrupted 6-8 months ago. It takes a while to catch up.
For another thing, you're wrapping up this near 20 hour story. If you've come to care about any of the characters, there's a good chance you won't find out what happened to them. A lot of creatures drifted through the stories over the years and are left to drift.
Also, a lot of the characters die. Now, it's a war, so you expect that. But you just see them stretched or crumpled over and you don't really get a chance to—well, hell, you're wondering who it is when they flash by and by the time you think you've puzzled it through, a bunch of other characters end up dead.
And when it's over, it's over. They very wisely did not do the LOTR thing with the four hundred different endings, but the price of that is a sort of anticlimactic denouement, if that's even possible. It's almost a "monster's dead, movie's over" situation, though there is a nice (short) epilogue.
So, yeah, good ending to the series.
Thank God.
Actually, all things considered? This is a very solid series of movies. Especially after the first couple of cutesy-poo Chris Columbus flicks (Sorceror's Stone and Chamber of Secrets). The uneven third flick had some edge and real heart, with Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men) at the helm, and Mike Newell (Prince of Persia) made the silly plot of The Goblet of Fire overlookable.
The last four films (Order of the Phoenix, Half-Blood Prince, Deathly Hallows I and II) were all done by David Yates who has done a fine job, st least as far as creating watchable movies, I can't speak to faithfulness to the source material.
So, what to say about this one? Well, Ace of Spades lamented, when he heard the last book had been split in to two movies, that there wasn't enough material.
Not a problem. Part 1 moved along briskly, and Part 2 is actually pretty breakneck. There's a lot to wrap up here, and the Big Reveal to be revealed, and what-not.
The Big Reveal isn't going to surprise anyone, I don't think. My kids saw it coming around the fifth movie—well, The Boy did. The Flower was born the year the first one came out so she wasn't even prepared to be surprised by the twist.
Well, that's one reveal. The other reveal—well, that seemed obvious to me from the get-go.
This is not a bad thing, mind you. If they had really been shocking at this point, halfway through the last half of the last book, it would have felt like a cheat. (Though this theory about Neville would've been fun.) Really, for a movie series that's based on a fair amount of slapdashery, the final chapter hangs together and brings things together.
The movie could actually be stitched two the first half to make a seamless four-and-a-half-hour movie (yow!) beginning as it does at the point where Valdemort robs the Elder Wand from the grave. Meanwhile, Harry, Ron and Hermione are off to destroy the horcruxes (the vessels that hold Valdemort's soul and preserve his immortality).
This leads to a bank heist (with shootout!) and then takes them back to a thoroughly occupied Hogwart's (apparently Valdemort thought it would be a good idea to keep two horcruxes in the same place). And thus begins the last stand.
There's not much to say really. At this point, you know whether you're going to see it or not. Are you really going to see 6 1/2 chapters of a story without seeing the last? Although, in fairness, I know a guy who has only seen the last three or four films and enjoyed them.
To the film's, and the series', credit, this isn't the Star Wars prequels or Lord of the Rings, where I really did just see the last ones because I'd seen the first two. The Boy shares my opinion here: While far from a fan, he's been liking these later movies more.
The Flower, on the other hand, hates them. Not that she thinks they're bad, necessarily, but she's sort of picked up on the fact that Rowling basically dumps on Harry. He can't get a break. The Flower doesn't care for that sort of thing. (She hates Charlie Brown, too, for stuff like the ever-escaping football. "The most depressing series ever.")
Her opinion? "It's no Gran Torino, but it wasn't bad!"
High praise, indeed. (Gran Torino is one of her favorite movies and the funniest she's ever seen, she says.)
The movie suffers a bit from a few things. For one thing, if you primarily watch the movies when they come out, you're basically seeing the second half a movie after you got interrupted 6-8 months ago. It takes a while to catch up.
For another thing, you're wrapping up this near 20 hour story. If you've come to care about any of the characters, there's a good chance you won't find out what happened to them. A lot of creatures drifted through the stories over the years and are left to drift.
Also, a lot of the characters die. Now, it's a war, so you expect that. But you just see them stretched or crumpled over and you don't really get a chance to—well, hell, you're wondering who it is when they flash by and by the time you think you've puzzled it through, a bunch of other characters end up dead.
And when it's over, it's over. They very wisely did not do the LOTR thing with the four hundred different endings, but the price of that is a sort of anticlimactic denouement, if that's even possible. It's almost a "monster's dead, movie's over" situation, though there is a nice (short) epilogue.
So, yeah, good ending to the series.
Saturday, July 16, 2011
The Chameleon
The movie well is pretty dry, as it tends to be mid-summer, if you're not into loud, obnoxious and dumb. And I'm actually into any two of those, but all three at once sort of turns me off. Anyway, the upshot is that we ended up seeing a movie called The Chameleon which has two cuts: One which is apparently crap, and one which is apparently good.
We, of course, didn't know which cut it was. But I hope it was the bad one.
The premise is intriguing, and based (very loosely) on a real events: A missing Louisiana child turns up four years later. Only looking a lot more than four years older. And having a (Continental) French accent. And just generally not seeming much like the missing child.
The family with the missing child is apartment and trailer dwellers, so there's no monetary motivation for him to lie. They're also seriously dysfunctional, with a con half-brother and a half-in-the-bag mother (played by a very anti-glammed Ellen Barkin). On the other side, you have to wonder why any family would pretend that an impostor was their missing son.
So, you have a mystery. And one that's irritating the crap out of an FBI agent (Famke Janssen), who pursues the situation when no one else cares to.
The con half-bother (Nick Stahl) also seems to be constantly on the verge of killing the kid (Marc-André Grondin) which gives the movie a kind of a thriller aspect to it.
In fact, it was the mystery/thriller aspect that inclined me to take a shot at this flick, but it really fails at both. (Or the cut I saw did, and frankly, I don't know enough about French director Jean-Paul Salomé to vouch for him.) The problem is, the mystery comes from murky motivations. What happens doesn't entirely make sense from any point of view apart from a sort of surreal, highly emotional one.
The Boy and I were trying to figure out who the main character was, with no success. The only real possibilities are the kid, the mother or the FBI agent. The kid and the mother form a bond, and the former has a sort of character arc, but it's a very strange and muted one. The FBI agent doesn't really have a character arc.
It's one of those movies that seems more like a series of events than a focused narrative. That makes it sort of listless, despite the rather interesting subject matter. It comes off sort of like an episode of "The Closer", except "The Closer" is a pretty tight show with better production values. And less on-screen drug use, I guess.
The most compelling drama is between the kid and the mother, but their moments seem sort of stilted. Janssen's character has some real depth, and since she's in less awkward situations, her character is revealed in ways that seem more natural. They also tried de-glamming her, but it didn't really take.
I think, sometimes, if you're doing a "ripped from the headlines" type story, you have some obligation to the truth, and that can tie your hands, dramatically speaking. But that presumes you're trying to stay true to life, which I think was pretty secondary here.
If you're not, you should go to town and do whatever it takes to make an artistically satisfying film, facts be damned. I think this movie wasn't concerned with the actuality, at least as production wore on (if ever), but they didn't cut loose and give us either a good mystery or a good thriller. And in the long run, aspersions were cast. Cast, slung and sprayed all over the damn place.
The Boy and I were not impressed, and we couldn't recommend what we saw. I'm suspicious how much better another cut could be, though. The flaws seemed to be structural. Thinking about it, while the audience does not know what's going on, the film's characters pretty much all have to. The exception is the FBI agent, of course, and if the movie had gone from her perspective the whole time, you might have had something.
As it is, it's just us trying to figure out what's going on and the movie basically refusing to tell us. There is a scenario strongly suggested throughout most of the movie, which then seems to be potentially refuted by the last scenes. And without any particular suspense, really.
So, view at your own peril (as always).
We, of course, didn't know which cut it was. But I hope it was the bad one.
The premise is intriguing, and based (very loosely) on a real events: A missing Louisiana child turns up four years later. Only looking a lot more than four years older. And having a (Continental) French accent. And just generally not seeming much like the missing child.
The family with the missing child is apartment and trailer dwellers, so there's no monetary motivation for him to lie. They're also seriously dysfunctional, with a con half-brother and a half-in-the-bag mother (played by a very anti-glammed Ellen Barkin). On the other side, you have to wonder why any family would pretend that an impostor was their missing son.
So, you have a mystery. And one that's irritating the crap out of an FBI agent (Famke Janssen), who pursues the situation when no one else cares to.
The con half-bother (Nick Stahl) also seems to be constantly on the verge of killing the kid (Marc-André Grondin) which gives the movie a kind of a thriller aspect to it.
In fact, it was the mystery/thriller aspect that inclined me to take a shot at this flick, but it really fails at both. (Or the cut I saw did, and frankly, I don't know enough about French director Jean-Paul Salomé to vouch for him.) The problem is, the mystery comes from murky motivations. What happens doesn't entirely make sense from any point of view apart from a sort of surreal, highly emotional one.
The Boy and I were trying to figure out who the main character was, with no success. The only real possibilities are the kid, the mother or the FBI agent. The kid and the mother form a bond, and the former has a sort of character arc, but it's a very strange and muted one. The FBI agent doesn't really have a character arc.
It's one of those movies that seems more like a series of events than a focused narrative. That makes it sort of listless, despite the rather interesting subject matter. It comes off sort of like an episode of "The Closer", except "The Closer" is a pretty tight show with better production values. And less on-screen drug use, I guess.
The most compelling drama is between the kid and the mother, but their moments seem sort of stilted. Janssen's character has some real depth, and since she's in less awkward situations, her character is revealed in ways that seem more natural. They also tried de-glamming her, but it didn't really take.
I think, sometimes, if you're doing a "ripped from the headlines" type story, you have some obligation to the truth, and that can tie your hands, dramatically speaking. But that presumes you're trying to stay true to life, which I think was pretty secondary here.
If you're not, you should go to town and do whatever it takes to make an artistically satisfying film, facts be damned. I think this movie wasn't concerned with the actuality, at least as production wore on (if ever), but they didn't cut loose and give us either a good mystery or a good thriller. And in the long run, aspersions were cast. Cast, slung and sprayed all over the damn place.
The Boy and I were not impressed, and we couldn't recommend what we saw. I'm suspicious how much better another cut could be, though. The flaws seemed to be structural. Thinking about it, while the audience does not know what's going on, the film's characters pretty much all have to. The exception is the FBI agent, of course, and if the movie had gone from her perspective the whole time, you might have had something.
As it is, it's just us trying to figure out what's going on and the movie basically refusing to tell us. There is a scenario strongly suggested throughout most of the movie, which then seems to be potentially refuted by the last scenes. And without any particular suspense, really.
So, view at your own peril (as always).
Sunday, July 10, 2011
The Names of Love (Le nom de gens)
Holy cow. A French movie about a coupla French socialists. How the Hell do I sell this to The Boy?
Popcorn. Lots of popcorn.
The Names of Love is one of those quirky movies that only the French can make and—unlike so many things they do—can make completely unselfconsciously. It's so backward from an American point-of-view you can't help but be a little charmed and a little, like, "Hey! I thought these guys were sophisticates!"
Here's the story: Buttoned-up Arthur Martin, Parisian dead fowl investigator, is chided by "liberated" (read slutty) Baya Benmahmoud during a radio show where he's warning against bird flu. She says, astutely, "You're making us all crazy with your panicky talk" or something of that sort. Arthur, for his part, says stuff like "We must be constantly vigilant, but not too alarmed" and other very official, meaningless things.
After rejecting Baya's offer of sex (she only sleeps with men on the first date) the two part ways, only to meet up again on another occasion. This time Arthur takes her up on her offer, but they split for a minute, which is long enough for Baya to become completely disoriented, caught up in three other obligations, and wandering the street naked.
Arthur rescues her and they become a sort of item. We learn that Baya is a committed socialist who targets right wingers and converts them from their wicked ways by having sex with them.
I know, right? French!
Arthur is different, of course, or we wouldn't have a movie. Arthur is already a committed socialist and the two share a love of Lionel Jospin, the socialist candidate beaten in 2002 by (right wing) Jacques Chirac. ("Right wing" in France means "not completely committed to the total control of the economy in all its facets by the government", I gather.)
Actually, in some ways, this movie is thematically a lot like the last movie we saw, Beginners. Arthur and Baya are sorta messed up in their own ways that go back to their parents. But in this case, the problems seem to be cultural. Baya is the daughter of an Algerian solder and a hippie mother, while Arthur's Jewish mother escaped concentration camps in WWII. Arthur's paternal grandparents, on the other hand, were actually deported from France back to Greece.
Given the Martins' policy of never talking about anything, we don't learn anything else about the Greek grandparents.
At one point, Arthur realizes he can attract the girls with stories of his grandparents' persecution, but it makes him feel unclean to do so, and he simply stops talking about it at all. Baya, on the other hand, regrets that she hasn't experienced the persecution that is her due, as a half-Algerian.
At this point, it's hard to regard the French as anything but a sort of naive, muddled provincials. I mean, seriously, Arthur and Baya are riddled with angst over questions of birth that would register a shrug in the United States! Can you imagine an entire modern American movie based around a mixed couple? Didn't we do all those in the '70s?
But I digress. It's still an issue for the French, apparently.
One of the cutest moments is when Arthur confesses to Baya that he thinks, right or left, political parties tend to do bad things. Baya cannot absorb it. If it's true, she reasons, nothing makes any sense at all. The left is good, the right is bad, she asserts existentially. (I don't know if that's the right word, but it should be.)
The murkiness doesn't end with politics and race, though. Sex is an issue, too, of course. Baya is "liberated", in Martin's words. Maybe even "too liberated". Of course, she's not "liberated" at all: She's a slut. And nuts. She was molested as a child—French comedy, remember—which would seem to cast doubt on the whole sexual free spirit stuff.
And maybe this kind of muddled messaging is why the whole movie works. Director Michel Leclerc doesn't try to assert the rightness of any of it. A lot of it is played for laughs, thought always with a gentle touch and empathy for the characters. The movie suggests that, somehow, the characters will survive the success of such right-wing heavies as Chirac and (gasp!) Sarkozy.
And maybe, just maybe, a whole lot of fuss is being made about politics and race and freeing crabs (you'll understand when you see it) that pales next to the business of actually living and loving.
Which also seems very French.
Leclerc co-wrote the script with Baya Kasmi whose name and appearance evokes that of the Baya Benmahmoud of the movie, suggesting some autobiography here.
The cast is excellent, but unless you're an afficianado of French film you probably don't know these guys. I see more French flicks than most, but I couldn't place Jacques Gamblin (who plays Arthur) and Sarah Forestier looked really familiar but I think the only movie I've seen her in is the unusual Perfume: The Story of a Murder. Zinedine Soualem, who plays Baya's dad, was in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Michele Moretti (Martin's mom) played a role in the enjoyable Apres Vous.
But that probably doesn't mean much to you. There are typically 2-3 French films a year I get to, so unless someone's having a very good year, I'm probably not going to see them enough to be able to recognize them. And all the hot stars from 5 or so years ago aren't getting into movies that make it out here very much.
C'est la vie, eh?
Anyway, worked for me. Worked for the Boy, even with the odds stacked against it. Pretty good recommendation, overall.
Popcorn. Lots of popcorn.
The Names of Love is one of those quirky movies that only the French can make and—unlike so many things they do—can make completely unselfconsciously. It's so backward from an American point-of-view you can't help but be a little charmed and a little, like, "Hey! I thought these guys were sophisticates!"
Here's the story: Buttoned-up Arthur Martin, Parisian dead fowl investigator, is chided by "liberated" (read slutty) Baya Benmahmoud during a radio show where he's warning against bird flu. She says, astutely, "You're making us all crazy with your panicky talk" or something of that sort. Arthur, for his part, says stuff like "We must be constantly vigilant, but not too alarmed" and other very official, meaningless things.
After rejecting Baya's offer of sex (she only sleeps with men on the first date) the two part ways, only to meet up again on another occasion. This time Arthur takes her up on her offer, but they split for a minute, which is long enough for Baya to become completely disoriented, caught up in three other obligations, and wandering the street naked.
Arthur rescues her and they become a sort of item. We learn that Baya is a committed socialist who targets right wingers and converts them from their wicked ways by having sex with them.
I know, right? French!
Arthur is different, of course, or we wouldn't have a movie. Arthur is already a committed socialist and the two share a love of Lionel Jospin, the socialist candidate beaten in 2002 by (right wing) Jacques Chirac. ("Right wing" in France means "not completely committed to the total control of the economy in all its facets by the government", I gather.)
Actually, in some ways, this movie is thematically a lot like the last movie we saw, Beginners. Arthur and Baya are sorta messed up in their own ways that go back to their parents. But in this case, the problems seem to be cultural. Baya is the daughter of an Algerian solder and a hippie mother, while Arthur's Jewish mother escaped concentration camps in WWII. Arthur's paternal grandparents, on the other hand, were actually deported from France back to Greece.
Given the Martins' policy of never talking about anything, we don't learn anything else about the Greek grandparents.
At one point, Arthur realizes he can attract the girls with stories of his grandparents' persecution, but it makes him feel unclean to do so, and he simply stops talking about it at all. Baya, on the other hand, regrets that she hasn't experienced the persecution that is her due, as a half-Algerian.
At this point, it's hard to regard the French as anything but a sort of naive, muddled provincials. I mean, seriously, Arthur and Baya are riddled with angst over questions of birth that would register a shrug in the United States! Can you imagine an entire modern American movie based around a mixed couple? Didn't we do all those in the '70s?
But I digress. It's still an issue for the French, apparently.
One of the cutest moments is when Arthur confesses to Baya that he thinks, right or left, political parties tend to do bad things. Baya cannot absorb it. If it's true, she reasons, nothing makes any sense at all. The left is good, the right is bad, she asserts existentially. (I don't know if that's the right word, but it should be.)
The murkiness doesn't end with politics and race, though. Sex is an issue, too, of course. Baya is "liberated", in Martin's words. Maybe even "too liberated". Of course, she's not "liberated" at all: She's a slut. And nuts. She was molested as a child—French comedy, remember—which would seem to cast doubt on the whole sexual free spirit stuff.
And maybe this kind of muddled messaging is why the whole movie works. Director Michel Leclerc doesn't try to assert the rightness of any of it. A lot of it is played for laughs, thought always with a gentle touch and empathy for the characters. The movie suggests that, somehow, the characters will survive the success of such right-wing heavies as Chirac and (gasp!) Sarkozy.
And maybe, just maybe, a whole lot of fuss is being made about politics and race and freeing crabs (you'll understand when you see it) that pales next to the business of actually living and loving.
Which also seems very French.
Leclerc co-wrote the script with Baya Kasmi whose name and appearance evokes that of the Baya Benmahmoud of the movie, suggesting some autobiography here.
The cast is excellent, but unless you're an afficianado of French film you probably don't know these guys. I see more French flicks than most, but I couldn't place Jacques Gamblin (who plays Arthur) and Sarah Forestier looked really familiar but I think the only movie I've seen her in is the unusual Perfume: The Story of a Murder. Zinedine Soualem, who plays Baya's dad, was in The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and Michele Moretti (Martin's mom) played a role in the enjoyable Apres Vous.
But that probably doesn't mean much to you. There are typically 2-3 French films a year I get to, so unless someone's having a very good year, I'm probably not going to see them enough to be able to recognize them. And all the hot stars from 5 or so years ago aren't getting into movies that make it out here very much.
C'est la vie, eh?
Anyway, worked for me. Worked for the Boy, even with the odds stacked against it. Pretty good recommendation, overall.
Beginners
Longtime readers know how I feel about teh gay, at least as it appertains to indie cinema, and I didn't exactly stampede to see Beginners, the new(ish) movie with Christopher Plummer and—uh, what's his name. That guy who did the kick-ass Alec Guiness impression in the Star Wars prequels. Not Ethan Hawke...Ewan MacGregor! That's the guy.
Sorry. I'm getting older. The names aren't coming as fast as they used to.
Anyway, the story is about Oliver (MacGregor), a wan sort of graphic artist, whose mom has just died. His 76-year-old father, Hal (Plummer) has since come out of the closet and devoted his last years to pursuing his sexuality. Also, Hal has terminal cancer.
The story takes place along three timelines: One in the late '50s, where we meet Hal's mom, Georgia (played by the lovely Mary Page Keller, best known to me as the star of the early Fox sitcom "Duet", who's actually a little too old to be playing a mom in the '50s, but I didn't mind), one from 2003 showcasing Hal's life after Georgia dies, and one from 2006 where Oliver tries to sort out his head after Hal dies, and make a relationship with the beautiful Anna (Mélanie Laurent, of last years fun Franco-Russo flick The Concert).
Wow, does that read as awful as I think it does?
It's really not. It's actually a very enjoyable movie.
Yeah, Oliver's a mope, but he's sort of a whimsical mope. He loves his dad, and is supportive of him. A central player in this drama is Hal's dog, who has occasional subtitles, which works better than you might think it would.
I guess what it comes down to is, none of the characters are bad guys, they're just sort of befuddled. Hal is as unapologetic about his relationship with Georgia (who entered the relationship knowingly, if deluded) as he is about his 11th hour aggressive pursuit of homosexuality. Oliver and Anna struggle along, being sort of weird, hurting each other by sheer emotional awkwardness.
It wasn't boring. You're rooting for everyone.
The movie largely stays away from being glib or simplistic, although I had a little trouble with the central premise, which I took to be "I'm screwed up because my dad was gay and married to my mom."
But what do I know?
The key may be that The Boy enjoyed it, and that says something about a movie that features a fair amount of dudes kissing.
Anyway, if you up for a low key drama that's not too heavy, and you're not, you know, adverse to the dudes kissing thing, it's a good bet.
(Also, if you're a Christopher Plummer fan, check out The Man In The Chair.)
Sorry. I'm getting older. The names aren't coming as fast as they used to.
Anyway, the story is about Oliver (MacGregor), a wan sort of graphic artist, whose mom has just died. His 76-year-old father, Hal (Plummer) has since come out of the closet and devoted his last years to pursuing his sexuality. Also, Hal has terminal cancer.
The story takes place along three timelines: One in the late '50s, where we meet Hal's mom, Georgia (played by the lovely Mary Page Keller, best known to me as the star of the early Fox sitcom "Duet", who's actually a little too old to be playing a mom in the '50s, but I didn't mind), one from 2003 showcasing Hal's life after Georgia dies, and one from 2006 where Oliver tries to sort out his head after Hal dies, and make a relationship with the beautiful Anna (Mélanie Laurent, of last years fun Franco-Russo flick The Concert).
Wow, does that read as awful as I think it does?
It's really not. It's actually a very enjoyable movie.
Yeah, Oliver's a mope, but he's sort of a whimsical mope. He loves his dad, and is supportive of him. A central player in this drama is Hal's dog, who has occasional subtitles, which works better than you might think it would.
I guess what it comes down to is, none of the characters are bad guys, they're just sort of befuddled. Hal is as unapologetic about his relationship with Georgia (who entered the relationship knowingly, if deluded) as he is about his 11th hour aggressive pursuit of homosexuality. Oliver and Anna struggle along, being sort of weird, hurting each other by sheer emotional awkwardness.
It wasn't boring. You're rooting for everyone.
The movie largely stays away from being glib or simplistic, although I had a little trouble with the central premise, which I took to be "I'm screwed up because my dad was gay and married to my mom."
But what do I know?
The key may be that The Boy enjoyed it, and that says something about a movie that features a fair amount of dudes kissing.
Anyway, if you up for a low key drama that's not too heavy, and you're not, you know, adverse to the dudes kissing thing, it's a good bet.
(Also, if you're a Christopher Plummer fan, check out The Man In The Chair.)
Super 8
What if a bunch of kids in 1979 were making a movie and they saw a massive train wreck? And what if the train were carrying some kind of mysterious menace? And what if the kids embarked on an adventure to discovery the mysterious menace, while being further menaced by menacing military madmen?
Now, what if Steven Spielberg happened to catch all this on film?
Or, okay, J. J. Abrams filmed it, which is sort of like Spielberg-plus-lens-flare.
Well, then you'd have something like Super 8, the modern day Goonies flick which seems to have registered a collective "meh", given its pedigree. The Boy and The Flower both failed to register any enthusiasm for it, though they didn't really complain, either. They didn't have high expectations going in, and they weren't disappointed or surprised.
The story is about a group of kids making a movie in 1979 on the titular film. Said film stock, by the way, is never referenced by name, so I imagined a substantial percentage of the audience saying, "Huh?" That is, if they paused to ask themselves what "Super 8" meant.
Anyway, the kids are shooting their film when there's a train wreck right before their eyes (and camera). Throw in a mysterious, incoherent teacher injured in the wreck, strange noises, and menacing G-Men, and you got yourself a picture.
It's well shot, of course, moves briskly, has some laughs, and the kids all carry off their acting duties. Special effects are good, too.
So why isn't it boffo?
I have some theories, as you might expect.
First of all, in one of the early scenes, the fat director kid is explaining to the main character that he's rewritten the script to have the cute chick in it because adding the character development will make the audience care what happens to the hero when he's eaten by zombies.
So, we have this sub-plot where the main character's mom dies and this is kinda-sorta the fault of the cute chick's alcoholic dad, and the main character's dad is a hardass, and there's a love triangle, sorta, between the main character, the fat kid and the cute chick and...
Well, it all feels like they lampshaded it in that early scene. "Look, now we're making you care about the characters!"
Strangely inartful.
Sorta like the very first scene where the camera pans down (with dolorous music a-playing) to a factory, then cuts to the inside where a worker is solemnly taking down the counter from a "days since last accident" sign, to replace with a "1". (At least, I hope it wasn't a zero. That would be too much.)
Feels like an exercise from a screenplay writing handbook. Also, it conjures up a whole lot of humor. I think "Family Guy" and "The Simpson's" both have done a gag like that. Pretty sure I've seen it in a "Far Side" cartoon. As a joke, I expect it goes back to WWII, or to whenever those signs were invented.
Little risky using that for your "telling the audience someone has died" serious moment.
The drama comes off as a by-the-numbers exercise.
It doesn't help that the big dramatic connection between cute girl's dad and hero's mom's death is really tenuous. I mean, when the big reveal came, I just kind of thought everyone was sort of stupid. I guess that's not entirely unrealistic, but it wasn't very involving.
The whole thing kind of comes off that way. A lot of near misses that sort of remind you of more successful endeavors. People are disappearing right and left, but the why of that isn't really clear, for example.
Another thing: The climactic scene isn't, very. And I can't for the life of me figure out why they left a perfectly good opportunity for a suspenseful conclusion on the table. The kids are really barely involved with the final resolution of the story.
Which is just sort of weird.
There's also no real resolution about the nature of the mysterious menace, in a moral sense. It also feels like a plug-in menace right out of a '50s sci-fi movie. You're just supposed to fill-in-the-blanks, apparently.
Now, they nailed 1979. This was of little interest to the kids. But the lingo, hairstyles, clothing and technology was all pretty dead on. (There was a "bogus" and a "totally" which struck me as more '80s, but that's kind of splitting hairs.)
Like I said, it's not bad. And if you're not expecting the return of—I dunno, whatever, 1980s-era kiddie movie floats your boat (I pretty much hated all of them)—it's a not unpleasant way to pass a couple of hours. Bonus points if you've got any 1979 nostalgia. (But if you do? You should be ashamed of yourself.)
Anyway, all three of us were, like, totally, "Yeah. OK. Not bad."
So there ya have it.
Now, what if Steven Spielberg happened to catch all this on film?
Or, okay, J. J. Abrams filmed it, which is sort of like Spielberg-plus-lens-flare.
Well, then you'd have something like Super 8, the modern day Goonies flick which seems to have registered a collective "meh", given its pedigree. The Boy and The Flower both failed to register any enthusiasm for it, though they didn't really complain, either. They didn't have high expectations going in, and they weren't disappointed or surprised.
The story is about a group of kids making a movie in 1979 on the titular film. Said film stock, by the way, is never referenced by name, so I imagined a substantial percentage of the audience saying, "Huh?" That is, if they paused to ask themselves what "Super 8" meant.
Anyway, the kids are shooting their film when there's a train wreck right before their eyes (and camera). Throw in a mysterious, incoherent teacher injured in the wreck, strange noises, and menacing G-Men, and you got yourself a picture.
It's well shot, of course, moves briskly, has some laughs, and the kids all carry off their acting duties. Special effects are good, too.
So why isn't it boffo?
I have some theories, as you might expect.
First of all, in one of the early scenes, the fat director kid is explaining to the main character that he's rewritten the script to have the cute chick in it because adding the character development will make the audience care what happens to the hero when he's eaten by zombies.
So, we have this sub-plot where the main character's mom dies and this is kinda-sorta the fault of the cute chick's alcoholic dad, and the main character's dad is a hardass, and there's a love triangle, sorta, between the main character, the fat kid and the cute chick and...
Well, it all feels like they lampshaded it in that early scene. "Look, now we're making you care about the characters!"
Strangely inartful.
Sorta like the very first scene where the camera pans down (with dolorous music a-playing) to a factory, then cuts to the inside where a worker is solemnly taking down the counter from a "days since last accident" sign, to replace with a "1". (At least, I hope it wasn't a zero. That would be too much.)
Feels like an exercise from a screenplay writing handbook. Also, it conjures up a whole lot of humor. I think "Family Guy" and "The Simpson's" both have done a gag like that. Pretty sure I've seen it in a "Far Side" cartoon. As a joke, I expect it goes back to WWII, or to whenever those signs were invented.
Little risky using that for your "telling the audience someone has died" serious moment.
The drama comes off as a by-the-numbers exercise.
It doesn't help that the big dramatic connection between cute girl's dad and hero's mom's death is really tenuous. I mean, when the big reveal came, I just kind of thought everyone was sort of stupid. I guess that's not entirely unrealistic, but it wasn't very involving.
The whole thing kind of comes off that way. A lot of near misses that sort of remind you of more successful endeavors. People are disappearing right and left, but the why of that isn't really clear, for example.
Another thing: The climactic scene isn't, very. And I can't for the life of me figure out why they left a perfectly good opportunity for a suspenseful conclusion on the table. The kids are really barely involved with the final resolution of the story.
Which is just sort of weird.
There's also no real resolution about the nature of the mysterious menace, in a moral sense. It also feels like a plug-in menace right out of a '50s sci-fi movie. You're just supposed to fill-in-the-blanks, apparently.
Now, they nailed 1979. This was of little interest to the kids. But the lingo, hairstyles, clothing and technology was all pretty dead on. (There was a "bogus" and a "totally" which struck me as more '80s, but that's kind of splitting hairs.)
Like I said, it's not bad. And if you're not expecting the return of—I dunno, whatever, 1980s-era kiddie movie floats your boat (I pretty much hated all of them)—it's a not unpleasant way to pass a couple of hours. Bonus points if you've got any 1979 nostalgia. (But if you do? You should be ashamed of yourself.)
Anyway, all three of us were, like, totally, "Yeah. OK. Not bad."
So there ya have it.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Quote of the Day: That's Not Irony
Meghan Casserly, of something called ForbesWoman, made the following statement in an article about how women won't marry guys who don't have jobs. (According to "Red Eye".)
On "Red Eye" this was followed up with Kayleigh McEnany saying:
It is ironic that women place more weight on love than money, yet won't marry if they or their potential suitor is unemployed.Ms. Casserly, that's not ironic, that's just wrong. If they placed more weight on love than money then money wouldn't matter.
On "Red Eye" this was followed up with Kayleigh McEnany saying:
I'm all about finding true love and what-not but...if you don't have a job, if you're homeless, I'm probably not going to love you.So much for "true love". But note: This is about marriage. The implications for non-marriage, non-loving relationships are left as an exercise for the reader.
Saturday, July 2, 2011
The Least Likely and Most Awesome Tax System Ever
Looooooong time readers will remember my "fair tax" proposal, the only one that is truly fair. But with Independence Day coming, I thought I'd try for another (ridiculous) tax idea. It wouldn't be fair in any sense of the word; it'd be better than fair, though.
As Barbie knows, a government's authority should derive from consent of the governed. The government never has the entire country's full consent, of course, but it does things that are more or less popular, like social security, health care "reform" or giving money to gang members.
So, how about this: How about no taxes?
Now, I realize they tried this with the Articles of Confederation, and it was a great weakness. But at the time we were a lot more States and a lot less United.
"But Blake," you say, "that would be the end of the government!"
"You have something on your cheek," I say. "Also, stop texting and driving."
It wouldn't be the end of the government if the government had the consent of the governed. I'm pretty radical, I know, but even I wouldn't want to see the government to go away completely. But when we allow the government to set its own levels of taxation, well, we get the current state, where we all pay about half of everything outright to various agencies with an added bonus suppression of our economic activity worth another half or more.
Run the government on donations. Run all of them on donations.
Also, allow taxpayers to allocate their money. Hate war, love handouts? Allocate your tax money to Welfare. Or, if your preferences are reversed, send it to Defense. Maybe even take it to the micromanagement level: Allow your donation to social security to be used for poor handicapped kids, but not rich old people. Or support the war in Afghanistan but not the one in Iraq.
Now, would this lead to some phenomenally bad decision making? Oh, yes, guaranteed. I don't know if we could have won the war in Iraq had we not persevered through unpopular times. On the other hand, we probably would have won Vietnam. Also, maybe Iraq wouldn't have been so unpopular if the administration had known that their success was tied to its popularity, and put some effort into explaining it.
Americans tend to be isolationists, though, so I suspect we'd see a quick drop in overseas military bases. Foreign aid—some of it would drop dramatically, of course, but some might actually go up.
War on drugs? I don't think there'd be huge support for it. But maybe if funds were limited, they could focus on the really bad stuff, and stuff aimed at kids.
The sort of business-squashing regulation industry that's bloomed over the past 100 years would be interesting. How many people would pay to support that? The real danger there would be that various industries would put a lot of money into regulation, then use that squash the competition.
Kind of like they do now. So, it's not a panacea. We'd still have to be paying attention. (Eternal vigilance, eh, what?) But, wow, what a feeling it would be. You'd really feel like you had some control. And various government agencies would bloody well have a good reason to treat you like a customer rather than a subject, wouldn't they?
I mean, hate the DMV? Don't fund it. If it has to shut down, the state could make a different plan up to better serve people. The IRS (and various state mini-IRSes) would be completely gone. Absolutely no need for a tax authority. The TSA would be a bad memory.
Tax time would be whenever you felt like it. The government could produce estimates of how much it needed to collect, monthly, quarterly, yearly. There'd be strong motivation to save a little cash in reserve for lean times.
Oh, yeah, the government would absolutely not be able to borrow.
Me? I'd pay $3,000-$4,000 a year for government. Maybe more. It's a little hard to gauge, since if it were drastically smaller, I'd be drastically better off, and feeling way more benevolent toward it than I currently am.
If you're thinking, as a lot of people probably would at this suggestion, that there's just no way that a government can exist without using force to collect money from people, I submit to you that no government really has the consent of the governed or could.
Now, if you want to argue that it's not fair, I agree. There would be tons of free-riders, just like the 50% or so of the population that pays no Federal income tax, or actually gets money back. I suspect, though, that quite a few of that 50% would donate. A lot of rich people wouldn't, probably more than the number of rich people who find ways out of paying taxes now.
But it would all be voluntary. A select few carry the burden of national defense for all of us. It's horribly unfair, but the only times you hear people complain we need a draft are when they want our national defense to be unpopular. (That's why some agitated so strongly for a draft at the height of the Iraq war's unpopularity.)
Some people would be exceeding generous while others would simply not donate at all. But there could be few complaints if none were forced into paying for things that they didn't want. And in this age of high-speed information, it's eminently do-able.
And if this couldn't work, the more interesting question become why not?
As Barbie knows, a government's authority should derive from consent of the governed. The government never has the entire country's full consent, of course, but it does things that are more or less popular, like social security, health care "reform" or giving money to gang members.
So, how about this: How about no taxes?
Now, I realize they tried this with the Articles of Confederation, and it was a great weakness. But at the time we were a lot more States and a lot less United.
"But Blake," you say, "that would be the end of the government!"
"You have something on your cheek," I say. "Also, stop texting and driving."
It wouldn't be the end of the government if the government had the consent of the governed. I'm pretty radical, I know, but even I wouldn't want to see the government to go away completely. But when we allow the government to set its own levels of taxation, well, we get the current state, where we all pay about half of everything outright to various agencies with an added bonus suppression of our economic activity worth another half or more.
Run the government on donations. Run all of them on donations.
Also, allow taxpayers to allocate their money. Hate war, love handouts? Allocate your tax money to Welfare. Or, if your preferences are reversed, send it to Defense. Maybe even take it to the micromanagement level: Allow your donation to social security to be used for poor handicapped kids, but not rich old people. Or support the war in Afghanistan but not the one in Iraq.
Now, would this lead to some phenomenally bad decision making? Oh, yes, guaranteed. I don't know if we could have won the war in Iraq had we not persevered through unpopular times. On the other hand, we probably would have won Vietnam. Also, maybe Iraq wouldn't have been so unpopular if the administration had known that their success was tied to its popularity, and put some effort into explaining it.
Americans tend to be isolationists, though, so I suspect we'd see a quick drop in overseas military bases. Foreign aid—some of it would drop dramatically, of course, but some might actually go up.
War on drugs? I don't think there'd be huge support for it. But maybe if funds were limited, they could focus on the really bad stuff, and stuff aimed at kids.
The sort of business-squashing regulation industry that's bloomed over the past 100 years would be interesting. How many people would pay to support that? The real danger there would be that various industries would put a lot of money into regulation, then use that squash the competition.
Kind of like they do now. So, it's not a panacea. We'd still have to be paying attention. (Eternal vigilance, eh, what?) But, wow, what a feeling it would be. You'd really feel like you had some control. And various government agencies would bloody well have a good reason to treat you like a customer rather than a subject, wouldn't they?
I mean, hate the DMV? Don't fund it. If it has to shut down, the state could make a different plan up to better serve people. The IRS (and various state mini-IRSes) would be completely gone. Absolutely no need for a tax authority. The TSA would be a bad memory.
Tax time would be whenever you felt like it. The government could produce estimates of how much it needed to collect, monthly, quarterly, yearly. There'd be strong motivation to save a little cash in reserve for lean times.
Oh, yeah, the government would absolutely not be able to borrow.
Me? I'd pay $3,000-$4,000 a year for government. Maybe more. It's a little hard to gauge, since if it were drastically smaller, I'd be drastically better off, and feeling way more benevolent toward it than I currently am.
If you're thinking, as a lot of people probably would at this suggestion, that there's just no way that a government can exist without using force to collect money from people, I submit to you that no government really has the consent of the governed or could.
Now, if you want to argue that it's not fair, I agree. There would be tons of free-riders, just like the 50% or so of the population that pays no Federal income tax, or actually gets money back. I suspect, though, that quite a few of that 50% would donate. A lot of rich people wouldn't, probably more than the number of rich people who find ways out of paying taxes now.
But it would all be voluntary. A select few carry the burden of national defense for all of us. It's horribly unfair, but the only times you hear people complain we need a draft are when they want our national defense to be unpopular. (That's why some agitated so strongly for a draft at the height of the Iraq war's unpopularity.)
Some people would be exceeding generous while others would simply not donate at all. But there could be few complaints if none were forced into paying for things that they didn't want. And in this age of high-speed information, it's eminently do-able.
And if this couldn't work, the more interesting question become why not?
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