Manic Monday Apocalypso: Watchmen

I would hate to judge an author by the film adaptations of his work, but if I were to do so for Alan Moore, I would say he was a nihilistic misanthropist who was far enough left to make Chosmky blush. And also that he was an idiot. But while the latter would probably be true of assessments made of most authors based on screen adaptations, there may be some merit to the former.

This is the guy who gave us V for Vendetta after all. Also League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but I have to believe that's not as stupid as it sounds, and it couldn't possibly be as dumb as the movie made it out to be. I just have to believe that, if I'm to have any faith in humanity at all.

Let me back up a bit and just talk about the movie: This is a decent superhero action flick, surprisingly entertaining for its length (two-and-a-half hours, not counting credits). The story takes place in an alternate 1985, and the premise is that masked heroes started appearing ca. World War II, and a second generation appeared in the '60s and helped the USA fight (and win!) the Vietnam War. (As if we lost that war for military or even enemy morale reasons.)

This win, and apparently the use of our five superheroes by President Nixon allows him to seek a fifth term--1968, 1972, 1976, 1980 and 1984--and somewhere around his third term, he makes masked vigilantism a crime. So our heroes are retired (a la Incredibles, which probably took a little inspiration from here) and either working clandestinely or not at all.

The story begins with one of the heroes, the Comedian, being killed. The Comedian's kind of a psychopathic Punisher type who really enjoyed Vietnam, and in one appalling scene opens fire on a crowd of protesters while screaming about the American Dream having come true. Jeffrey Dean Morgan does a fine job playing this "nuanced" character.

The hyper-violent Rorschach, who most reminded me of The Question, suspects foul play. Or rather, suspects fouler play than just a random burglary. He warns the Nite Owl, reminiscent of the Blue Beetle, but really evocative of a clunky Batman (complete with lots of money and toys), and the Nite Owl warns Ozymandias, now a super-successful businessman who's working on a cheap power source with the help of Dr. Manhattan.

Dr. Manhattan was exposed to some super-science thing that allows him to see into his own future and past, and apparently to give others the same power. Like his girlfriend, the Silk Spectre, who seems to be the only hero who inherited the position from her mother. Anyway, Dr. Manhattan's superpowers don't include giving a damn, which puts a strain on their relationship.

Anyway, there's lots going on, and director Zach Snyder keeps the action coming so that the story never gets bogged down. I'm always amused by the sort of critical reception of movie like this gets: Apparently it confused the poor dears. It's actually not at all confusing; it is, however, high volume, and some things are done shockingly poorly for such an A-level production.

The acting is largely top notch. I mentioned Morgan as the Comedian, but Patrick Wilson (most known to me as the guy who gets tortured by Ellen Page in the neat little horror flick Hard Candy) does a very fine job as Nite Owl, and Billy Crudup does well with a difficult role as the subtly emotional Dr. Manhattan. I found Malin Akerman, who plays the Black Canary-esque Silk Spectre, a little grating and occasionally radiating a kind of bimbotude, which was just tragically wrong for that part.

Once again, though, newly reborn Jackie Earle Haley (Bad News Freakin' Bears!) just kicks ass as the uncompromising terror, Rorschach. And he does it, for the most part, through a completely opaque, featureless mask. (Featureless except for the shifting pattern on it.)

So, while the acting is overall quite good, there is some wicked bad makeup. The makeup for the Nixon and Pat Robertson characters, for example, is just ostentatiously bad. Carla Gugino, who plays the original Silk Specter, does a fine job, but her old age makeup reminds me of that episode of the Brady Bunch where Peter plays Benedict Arnold. (Maybe I'm just hyper-critical of old age makeup and maybe I was turned off by the Nixon caricature after Frost/Nixon, but that's how it seemed.)

The familiar let's-open-an-action-scene-with-a-pop-song approach takes a beating here, too. The Hendrix version of Along The Watchtower is used, for example, and it fell flat with me. Worst of all--people are talking about this one a lot--was the use of Leonard Cohen's version of Hallelujah.

People, it was a dubious choice to have Leonard Cohen singing in the documentary about his own life, I'm Your Man. Putting his voice and the ridiculously clunky Hallelujah Chorus Singers that grace his recording of that song over a sex scene--not subtly in the background but loudly and insistently--was ridiculously tin-eared.

The other thing I'm on the fence about is the fact that, with the exception of Dr. Manhattan, they're all just regular heroes, not super heroes. That is, they have no powers. Except that they sort of do. I mean, in the opening scene where The Comedian is fighting his assailant, walls and furniture get smashed through. Rorschach scales walls as though attached to wires. Ozymandias is faster than a speeding bullet. And so on.

I dunno. A certain amount of "super" heroism is pretty much standard in action films. It was better than bogging down the film with a bunch of origins stories. (I had a minor but similar sort of feeling about the technology used by the Nite Owl. It was so clearly of today and not of the '80s; I would have liked to see future tech as imagined in the '80s.)

Overall, a flawed, but engaging movie.

The Boy pronounced it "Entertaining. But it had a message, and I don't know what it was. It would have been better without it."

But, of course, I knew what the message was, and I'm sure it seemed so incredibly profound back in '86 when this was written, that a lot of people are clinging to the story's "greatness" now without observing the irony that it was terribly, self-indulgently wrong. See, the authors proceeded from the standpoint that the human race was on the brink of destroying itself in '85, and built themselves a story around that concept.

Man's capacity for self-destruction is, of course, a fond topic for writers, as well as how to diver that energy elsewhere. Ray Bradbury wrote an upbeat little story called "The Toynbee Convector", for example on how a time machine saved humanity. This wouldn't be that story.

No, this is a story where imperialist America goes unchecked and--you know, when you get down to it, the villain is none other than Richard Nixon--brings the world to the brink of destruction.

Heroes are made from sadists and neurotics and mass-murderers, and the desire to create a "nuanced" story turns--as it always does--into a soap opera's celebration of pettiness. Dr. Manhattan gains incredible knowledge and wisdom, and as a result becomes detached from his humanity--not so detached that he can't cheat on his wife with a younger woman, but detached enough that he can't decide whether humanity is worth saving. The climactic scenes work--they vary from the graphic novel--but they don't bear much thinking about.

It's not that there aren't a lot of conflicting messages here, because there are, and there are supposed to be. You're supposed to make your own moral, which is what good artists allow the viewer to do. But the backdrop that that decision is supposed to made against is false, and rife with ugliness and ennui.

I haven't read the graphic novel; The Boy and I both eschewed that, feeling that the movie should stand on its own, and I think it does. Ultimately, whether the grim world view presented--and the few upbeat notes therein--are the influence of Moore (who had his name taken off the production) or Snyder or Gibbons (who illustrated the comic) doesn't really matter.

It's so very '80s, though, like Blade Runner, American Psycho and The Dark Knight Returns. The '80s generation, in its own way, is insufferable as the '60s generation was: Faced with unprecedented wealth and the demise of the great threat of our time, everyone was just so freaking convinced the world was coming to an end. (At least the Dark Knight embraced the notion that hard times meant heroes had to be even more heroic, on an even larger scale.)

Just in case you thought it mattered which Republican was in the White House.

So I give it a reserved recommendation--but you might find yourself a little embarrassed. There was talk of a sequel--I don't think the movie will do as well as predicted--but that would only be slightly less stupid than a sequel to Snyder's last film: 300.

Now, Who's Going To Win?

UPDATE: Wow, that was as bad as I thought it was going to be. Not the show, which I didn't watch--I was too busy drawing with The Flower--but my guesses. I didn't really see the Slumdog sweep; I thought there'd be more Milk. I'm almost totally indifferent, but I'm glad that Danny Boyle got an award. I think he's good and has been overlooked.

So, I hit: Picture, Actor, Actress and Supporting Actor. I missed Supporting Actress and Director. I got both original and adapted screenplay, and best animated feature, but missed both documentary and animated short. I totally botched the tech awards, missing Cinematography, Art Direction, Costumes--and Costumes should've been a gimme, with the historical epic Duchess up there. But honestly, who saw that? Anyone at all?

I hit editing and missed makeup, because I put Button's makeup in the SFX category, though it won both. So...11 out of 21. I'm going to give myself extra props for hitting some of the obscure ones.

Of course, the instant Slumdog won for sound, I knew it was going to grab the big awards (Picture and Director). The way the voting works is that the tech guys pick the nominees, but everyone votes for the winner, and a lot of the Academy doesn't understand the distinction between "sound" and "sound editing", or "sound" and "gee, I liked this movie and it sounded pretty good."

But congrats to the winner. Condolences to the losers. I hope Jenkins and Langella and the other really great ones who missed get another shot at it. I'm sure Penn, Winslet and Cruz will have plenty of opportunities in the future. (Penn has five noms and two wins, Winslet has six noms and one win: Do you ever get the idea the Academy just keeps nominating the same people until they win?)

(Original guesses below.)
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Usually, I'm pretty good at picking Oscar winners. But I have no good sense of who's going to do what this year. So here are my WAGs:

Best Picture: Slumdog Millionaire. Socially relevant, but not overly so.

Actor: Sean Penn. He'd be my penultimate choice, behind Langella, Jenkins and Rourke. Normally I'd say Rourke, but I kind of think this Oscars is going to be a battle between wanting to reward Milk and more sensibly promoting movies that have a chance to make money. (There's a real basis for this, by the way: A lot of voters are businessfolk voting their pocketbooks.

Actress: Kate Winslet. Is anyone else running? Nah, it's a good field, as always. I'd probably pick Hathaway myself: She's the Jenkins of this class, who did a fine, subtle job in a little movie. But she has lots of chances in her future.

Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger. If he were alive, they'd give it to Downey, Jr.--they owe him for Chaplin--or Brolin.

Supporting Actress: Viola Davis. With Henson, the only black person on the roster. I'm not saying that's why she's going to win, I'm just observing. But seriously, Tomei's not getting another one after My Cousin Vinnie, Adams and Cruz are in Oscar-bait movies every year, and Davis' part speaks to how horrible life was for black people.

Gus Van Sant: Best Director. Yeah. I'm guessing they'll split the picture/director award this year, though I suppose they could give best picture to Milk and best director to Boyle. But I don't think so.

Original Screenplay: Milk or Wall-E. I'm guessing Milk.

Adapted Screenplay: Slumdog Millionaire.

Cinematography: Dark Knight. Another WAG: They're going to honor the biggest movie since The Phantom Menace with technical awards. Maybe not this one, but....

Editing: Slumdog Millionaire. Eh. The editing in this movie was truly excellent and important to the film. Ha! Just another WAG.

Art Direction: Benjamin Button. Their sop to the movie that would otherwise be shut out.

Costumes: Benjamin Button. Their other sop.

Makeup: Dark Knight.

Music: Thomas Newman for WALL-E. No, wait, Danny Elfman for Milk. I think Newman probably should win, and he has the most noms, but Elfman defined the movie score of the '90s and never got so much as a nomination for Batman (1989) or Edward Scissorhands! They owe him some recognition.

Song: WALL-E. Well, yeah, the English Language pop song sung by Peter Gabriel, or some Hindi something or other?

Sound: Dark Knight

Sound Edit: Dark Knight

Visual FX: Benjamin Button. For make Cate Blanchett look 20 years younger, and like a different woman.

Animated: WALL-E.

Documentary: Betrayal. I'm guessing. This is all about how America acted badly so...

Animated Short: Presto. Maybe not, but it should be: It's one of the greatest cartoons made in the past 50 years.

Well, my usual live co-blogger/chat partner (Kelly) is absent tonight, so I probably won't even watch the show. Enjoy!

Fur is Murder. Fabulous, sexy murder.

One of the ways we, as a society, went wrong was by buckling into the red-paint-splashing fur-haters.

We can have a debate about the ethics of wearing fur--you'll lose, but we can have it--but the issue should've been removed from the table the instant terrorist tactics were used.

Yeah, pro-oil and pro-fur. And yet, not really conservative. Heh.

I mention this because Malkin is in the new Clare Booth Luce "Conservative Women" calendar. Now, the Luce family was corrupting media long before our current, completely disreputable media was even born. (Henry and Clare dropped LSD--responsibly, under a psychiatrist's careful gaze--back in 1958!) But that's a separate subject.

The subject here--the salient, eternal subject--is women in fur. Mmmmm. There's not much better than a woman wearing a fur. Maybe it's some primal thing, going back to when you had to hand kill the bear. Maybe it's that whatever they think consciously, women seem to respond in a primal fashion to wearing fur. Not too long ago, and for quite some time, the fur coat was the epitome of the luxury romance item, alongside of diamonds and fine chocolates.

Anyway, the pix...are a little disappointing. There's a great shot of Coulter up front, and Malkin's looking good. But they over did the makeup on Mary Katherine Ham--I know what they were going for, but it required more skill and lighting. MKH looks marvellous with a more "natural" makeup. You can see the same thing in the other pictures, too, although for some reason it works on Amanda Carpenter.

Tragically, I couldn't find a picture that really epitomized what I was thinking of while writing this. But how about a little Marilyn? An archetypal woman in an archetypal symbol of romance.

Demon's Rook

The next feature had such a tantalizing premise that we swallowed our disappointment over Cannon Fodder and marched in to see it.

It was called Demon's Rook and the idea is that a young boy communes with demons until one takes him to the underworld, where he lives for a decade or more, only emerging as a confused, heavily bearded adult. And, as it turns out, leading a bunch of other demons up into our world, where they wreak havoc.

The other hook this had going for it was that all the effects were practical. The director, James Sizemore, was also the special effects chief and star of the film (with his wife Ashley Jo). The makeup is quite good, very old school '80s but lovingly done, and by itself sets this movie apart from other low budget flicks.

Which is why the movie itself is such a crushing disappointment, in its way far worse than Cannon Fodder, which didn't really have much promise.

The best parts of this movie were the stretches without any dialogue, and another long stretch where the dialogue is entirely in demon-ese (no subtitles).

Another amusing thing was how it hearkened back to '80s, '70s and (at points) even '60s horror flicks. It starts out squarely in the '80s, during that Creepshow-inspired wave of monster-oriented horror features, videos and TV shows. Then at other parts it evokes '70s cult-oriented flicks like The Devils' Rain. At one point, there's a virtual go-go dance with demons, a la '60s. And the ending is kinda '60s nihilistic and reminded me of, like, Manos or Dementia 13 or something from that ilk.

Apart from that, it's a complete and utter mess. It's said that it took over two years to make with all the consequent cast and crew issues that would occur when you make a movie over the course of two years, even if it's mostly with friends and family. At the same time, Mrs. Sizemore can be seen in videos from a year ago talking about how "principal photography" is about to begin, and the movie was first aired in March.

Both things are possible, of course. It might be that many of the scenes were filmed over the course of two years with little more purpose than "this will be cool" and an idea about demons terrorizing a rural community.

Anyway, it's a sort of depressing experience, precisely because there's some real talent involved, not just in the makeup (obviously) but Sizemore seems to have a real facility for the visual aspect of filmmaking. But this comes off as sort of special-effects porno: the non-SFX portions are just filler.

We were so bummed at the end, we gave up on the festival.

Da Wolf, Man!

One of the problems with taking other people's advice about what movie to see is that they might get upset with you if you don't like it as much as they did. (And that's all I have to say about that. You know who you are.)

The Wolfman is a newish movie by the kind-of all over the place Joe Johnston, director of such diverse films as Jumanji and October Sky. It's oddly faithful to the original Universal classic, in such notable ways as re-creating Lon Chaney, Jr.'s furry-faced lycanthrope makeup. Nobody is calling this a perfect movie, but some parts are very effective. And, as always with horror movies, one person's effective is another person's cheesy laughable moment.

For me, I liked the sets, which seemed to use a minimum of CGI. I liked the makeup, as mentioned. I liked the way Benicio Del Toro reminded me of Chaney both in the thickness of his features and his sort of square acting.

Less successful was the near utter predictability of the whole affair. Now, given that this is a remake and there aren't a whole lot of ways for the story to turn out, it actually wasn't nearly as bad as some "original" movies we've seen lately. There's a scene in a mental asylum that was both original to this remake and evocative of the 1940s-era mad scientist movies.

Also, the finale did not emerge from classic werewolf movies of the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s—which I suppose is something of a spoiler. I rather liked that, however, because the movie was faithful in so many respects to the original that updating the ending was more effective than if they had modernized everything.

Emily Blunt and Hugo weaving both performed admirably well, unlike, sadly, Anthony Hopkins, whose performance might well define the phrase "phoning it in". (Have we seen anything out of this guy in the past ten years? What the hell happened? Is it just old age? And what the hell did he do to his face?)

A mixed bag to be sure. I rather enjoyed the overall experience as did the Old Man. The Boy did not look amused as he proclaimed that this was not his kind of movie. (What kind of movie was it? I asked him. He said, "Monster/action movies.")

But I would only recommend to the sorts of people who recommended it to me. Heh.

Prometheus

The opening scene of Prometheus features an alien landing on a lifeless earth, drinking some black goo, and then dissolving into a cloud of life-granting DNA.

I missed that scene.

The movie makes a lot more sense without it.

Prometheus is a prequel to the seminal 1979 sci-fi horror flick Alien, directed by Ridley Scott. It's not a "side-quel" as originally suggested, it's a straight-up prequel that explains how the alien-infested ship in the first movie came into being.

Sort of.

Prometheus can only marginally be said to explain anything. Well, that's not fair: It actually does explain Alien. It does so in such a way that raises a whole bunch of other questions that it can't possibly answer.

New franchise anyone?

The Red Letter guys did a bit where the one guy (who plays "Plinkett", I think, in the mega-star-wars-hooker-killing reviews) just fired off a series of things that don't make sense for about five minutes while the other guy sat there dumbfounded.

I thought one of the questions missed something pretty obvious, and a few others were deliberately raised, but there were a bunch of illogical things in the film, and a few of them bugged me. There's a couple of twists toward the end that are so obvious from the beginning that they're silly.

Actually, if the movie suffers from anything, it's the number of well-established sci-fi/horror tropes it hits—which it then feels the need to spell out. Not often in great detail or anything, but it has been over 30 years since the original Alien and we all know the drill by this point.

That said, I confess I liked this movie. I guess a lot of people had higher expectations because they were thinking "Ooh, Alien! By the original director! And the guy who did Blade Runner!" And maybe a few were thinking Gladiator, too. But, of course, those are three films over a 35 year career. And, if you think about it, it's really H.R. Giger's alien design in Alien—and a whole mess of visionary artists in Blade Runner—that make those films so iconic.

Not to minimize Scott's contributions to those movies in any way, but it's remarkable lightning struck twice in his career, and that shouldn't be confused with an ability to call lightning at will.

But I do tend to like his films, and I include this one with it. Noomi Rapace, the formerly dragon-tattooed girl, shows another side of herself: Sigourney Weaver's Ripley character is split between her, on the softer side, and Charlize Theron, whose character seems to have been almost entirely transplanted from Snow White and the Huntsman. Irdis Elbra reprises a character close enough to Al Matthews' Sgt. Apone in Aliens to where I started to wonder why they didn't just call him Sgt. Apone, Sr.

Other than that, there's Guy Pearce in ridiculous old-age makeup. As I mentioned in my review of J. Edgar, old-age makeup is always bad and that doesn't usually bother me. In this case, it called to mind an episode of "The Brady Bunch" where Peter (I think) plays Benedict Arnold on his deathbed. He's supposed to look like he's only got a few days to live, besides being 112-years-old or something.

The other characters are alien-fodder. The attempts at characterization clearly buckle under the larger need to put said characters in jeopardy.

The other thing that I really enjoyed about the film was the way it referenced and set up the original. The original, if anyone were to think about it, makes no sense either. How does it happen that a bunch of creatures on a forsaken planet are waiting there—completely untended—for untold time for compatible biological life to come along? It don't make no sense.

This, at least points to a connection that, if not plausible, is still way more plausible than any aspect of the "Star Wars" prequels. But there were nice directorial touches, shots and moments that pleasantly recalled the original.

You could say, in fact, this is one of the better Alien rip-offs. That's damning with faint praise, of course.

The Boy was fairly "meh" about it. Not too impressed, and a little insulted by the lampshade hanging, I think. Well, not really lampshade hanging but maybe more Narrating The Obvious. Ridley Scott hasn't directed a sci-fi or fantasy movie in over 25 years, but I am beginning to suspect he hasn't seen one in at least as long.

But, look, if you go in with modest expectations and a high proficiency at belief suspension, you'll see an expertly shot movie that moves almost fast enough to escape it's own illogic. Well, okay, not really, but you might not care.

J Edgar Whozits

One of my outré positions is that the Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn't really have a right to exist under the Constitution, and that J. Edgar Hoover was an evil little troll who was a horrible influence on this country.

So, yeah, Eastwood does a biopic of J. Edgar? Why not.

Let me say, first, that this is classic Eastwood (as director): Much like last year's Hereafter or (say) Million Dollar Baby, the octogenarian auteur is all about telling the story, whatever it is. And, in this case, the story is about an ambitious, vainglorious, sexually repressed blackmailer (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) as he tells the story on the one hand of the history of the FBI, and how, at the end of his life (as blackmailer in chief), he is threatened by the incoming President Nixon on the other.

I can't help but admire the direction, which is unflinching and unsentimental. He doesn't demonize Hoover—who could arguably benefit from a demonization—but he portrays him gathering his blackmail and expanding his powers, good intentions cheerfully in tow.

And yet. It's not a great movie, and I'm inclined to blame screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. If Tim Burton has daddy issues, and Alfred Hitchcock had issues with being falsely accused, Mr. Black has gay issues.

Actually, before I get to those, I want to also say that it seems like everyone has some issues when it comes to this movie. I read quite a few reviews of this beforehand (which I don't normally) at places like Big Hollywood and PJMedia and I'm not convinced we all saw the same movie.

For example, I read a reference to Hoover's mother, as played by Judi Dench, as domineering, which feeds into the clichéd gay thing, But that really reduces the role to a cartoonish level that isn't warranted. Dench's portrayal is stern and forbidding, but not domineering.

Likewise, getting back into the gay thing, Hoover is (at least initially) portrayed as a complex person, or perhaps if you prefer, a very simple person for whom sex (in whatever form) isn't on the menu. Sex is only going to be permissible if it's of a non-blackmail-able variety, is sort the impression you get.

But then Black goes whole hog (as it were) into "Hoover was a homosexual but refused to act on it." I'm of two minds as far as this goes: One, it's a completely hack and stereotyped way to indulge in a little fantasy; and two, it has the effect of humanizing Hoover in a very unlikely way, a way that makes the movie rather more watchable.

I think there's a little truth to both these ideas, but it also has a couple of other effects: One is that it's complete fantasy. I don't mean Hoover wasn't gay, 'cause I don't know. (I'd always heard he was a transvestite, though, and TVs are usually men—often macho men. But on reflection, it seems unlikely that the king of the blackmailers would ever put himself in a compromising situation.) What I mean is that the completely undocumented aspect of his relationship with Clyde Tolson (Armie Hammer) gives Black free reign to do this sort of wish-fulfillment thing.

This includes a scene where Hoover and Tolson (Armie Hammer) virtually swish over the gaucheness of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball at Del mar, and Tolson describes Dorothy Lamour as "camp". (That's not the only time that the dialog assaults the ear with a too modern sound, but it's one of the most egregious ones.)

The other effect of this, though, is that we're sort of mired in this (ultimately trivial) aspect of Hoover's life. This is the problem with the modern obsession with private details: The real story gets crowded out. This is sometimes justifiable, say, with something like The King's Speech (another largely fictitious but far more interesting movie).

But here, it doesn't matter that Hoover is gay (at least partially evinced by the fact that he probably wasn't). It could have been just as interesting to see him as bottled up, and tested by his attraction to Dorothy Lamour (who claimed to have an affair with him).

And it's not like there isn't 50 years of interesting dirt about Hoover, you know? The whole thread feels self-indulgent.

It's a flawed biopic. The acting is good. I think Dicaprio—who normally leaves me kind of cold—did one of his better jobs here. A lot of criticism has been leveled at the old age makeup, and it's got some validity to it, but I kind of register that as a big "so what"? Old age makeup is always bad, and always has been.

I would have preferred to see more actual FBI stuff. The fact that the FBI got their guns as a result of the Lindbergh kidnapping perhaps beginning the precedent that states that all laws named after children are bad ones.

HBO did a movie a few years back on the Lindbergh kidnapping which took the point-of-view that Hauptmann was innocent of the charges, whereas this movie posits that he didn't act alone—that he was maybe a patsy for the real criminals. Sorta. He's essentially a vehicle for the bureau's expansion of power.

Then there's the whole FBI rising while denying the existence of the mafia. What up wid dat? I mean, seriously, if you're going to go into fantasy-land about the story, how about bringing in the mafia? As a character study, wouldn't it have been more interesting to know (or speculate) on whether it was pride, arrogance, stupidity or something else causing Hoover's complete bungling of the major crime issue of his day?

Ah, well, lost opportunity. Also, keep in mind that my review isn't much like any of the others I've read, so maybe I saw a different movie from the ones other people saw, or the one you'd see.

As an Eastwood fan since Flags of our Fathers, The Boy was a bit disappointed, and found it overlong, though not especially so for a biopic. As someone more-or-less ignorant of the politics and history, his experience viewing the movie was probably one of the purer ones, and he rated it "so-so".

Riiftrax: Sharknado 2

The guys at Rifftrax have hit their 200th riff track this weekend, surpassing the amount of riffing done by Mystery Science Theater 3000, and we trundled down to see the second film in The Crappening, the 2015 slate of four films, starting with The Room and closing out with Miami Connection and Santa Claus vs. The Ice Cream Bunny.

Sharknado is one of those dumb Internet things, that would be barely worth a second look, except for the hyper-attention it got and the sort-of communal watching experience provided by Twitter which, even with all that, did not deserve even the "let's all goof on it" attention it got. And, hyper-attention notwithstanding, it apparently did no better than an average SyFy channel monster-fest. Perfect riffing material, right?

Well, no. At least not for me. Don't get me wrong: Mike, Kevin and Bill do yeoman's work here, by-and-large. We laughed. We had a good time. The only serious problem, technically, with this riffing was that the sound mix was bad. Like almost every other aspect of Sharknado 2: The Second One, the sound is half-assed. It's poorly mixed, in such a way that it was often hard to hear what people were saying, and the riffing sometimes got lost in the noise.

Bad sound was such an issue in MST3K that "good audio" was one of the key points of a good riffing movie on a list made by, I think, Joel in later years. But unlike the muffled ambient sound or poor overdubs of something like Manos: The Hands of Fate, this just feels neglectful.

In fact, all of Sharknado 2 could be summed up as "They just didn't care," a riff used during the classic MST3K episode "Attack of the the (sic) Eye Creatures". But it's more likely that the "Eye Creatures" creators did care but lacked the budget and skill to make a watchable film. This film is more a pure cynical calculation done on a spreadsheet in the bowels of NBCUniversal that answers "It doesn't matter what's in this. We can sell the rights for $X, and with $Y for budget, we'll make Z% profit."

And that trickles all the way down from the top to almost every corner of this looks-like-it-was-shot-on-a-cell-phone film. In the opening of the film, there's an airplane-in-distress sequence where the pilot is Robert Hayes. Although I barely recognized him, I guess that's worth a smile. But then you're kind of doing that through the whole movie: Is that somebody? Or somebody who used to be somebody?

But it can't keep your mind off, for example, the visible makeup, because the lighting is so bad. Or the sparing, awful special effects, which often look like somebody ran a blur filter on the frame. Or the constant, weather-free-except-for-sharks-and-flood effects of the Sharknado itself. (It never rains but floods figure big.)

You can justify some of this as being the natural effect of a low-budget, but I would point out the doubtless lower budget Big-Ass Spider or this year's Zombeavers. The former is constrained by the SyFy formula as much as Sharknado, but it looks like people cared. Zombeavers manages to be very entertaining and also highly skillful at balancing an extremely dumb concept with humor and horror.

And I recognize that these are largely people past their primes but I don't know if I were in the business of selling my face that I would agree to be in something like this. I don't know who Ian Ziering is, really, and had even less idea about Mark McGrath. Tara Reid at 38 needed a much gentler treatment. Vivica Fox looked decent, partly due to her skin I imagine, and partly due to fighting the trend of starving yourself thin so that when you hit 50 look like a drumhead. Kari Wuhrer also looked good, and actually professional.

The guys even commented on that: Something like "Stop that. Nobody else is acting..." I thought Bill Corbett said something about Wuhrer being in a worse movie (maybe the Eddie Murphy disaster "Meet Dave" with Corbett co-wrote) but I couldn't quite make it out. And she wasn't in that, so maybe he was talking about someone else. (Wuhrer was in Anaconda, of course.)

There's probably a master's degree or doctorate in characterizing "riffs", but I want to do a quick categorization to explain why, movie aside, the riffs here didn't entirely work for me.

1. You can riff on overall quality. This is standard audience-level riffing, where you turn to your friend and say "This sucks." It's easy and the sort of thing that makes you think you could riff, too, given a chance. There's actually a good example of this here where Ian Ziering is flying around in the tornado, able to kill sharks as he flies by. I think it's Mike who says, "You know guys, this movie is kind of dumb."

2. You can point out plot flaws. Murphy does a long riff here pointing out the complete stupidity of the idea that sharks could be tossed about in a weather event and not only not be killed but be so completely unaffected that their sole purpose would be to bite you. But here, as with everything in comedy, timing and brevity is everything. In episode #305 of MST3K, "Stranded In Space", one of the characters must abandon the hero because he spills his medicine, and he can't live without it. Crow comments: "Note to myself, pack more life-saving liquid."

3. You can draw physical environment references. Something looks like something else. Penises and boobs are always popular, though they mostly avoid that obvious stuff.

4. You can draw cultural references, which is a big source of jokes. As it turns out Jared Fogle, of Subway fame, is in this, with the FBI raiding his house only three days earlier, apparently looking for child porn. So, when he shows up on screen, they say, "We had a joke for this on Monday" which is better than any actual joke.

5. You can make fun of the actors. I think this is the trickiest thing to do well. It's best when there's an idiosyncratic element at play, like when Adrianna Miles can't pronounce "werewolf" in the movie Werewolf, or pretty much all of Tommy Wiseau. Ed Wood. Even Joe Don Baker. Or if there's an element of the movie that the actor just doesn't fit, like being lusted after by all the other characters inexplicably, or being really out of shape and yet still an action star.

So, here we have a lot of riffing on Tara Reid. A whole lot. I get that she's had plastic surgery. I get that she's sort of rough looking (and the lighting, makeup and camera work don't help). I get that she doesn't seem to be able to (or care to) act. And as someone who bashes this whole movie for its cynicism, I can relate to the idea that not trying is particularly mock-worthy.

But it stops being funny after a while, and for me, in fairly short order. It just feels mean.

I don't want to rag on it because it is funny, and Reid's not on screen much, but when she is, the laughs for me (and my companions) mostly stopped. Although we enjoyed it, it's not one I'd select for repeated viewing, especially with all the gems in the Rifftrax/MST3K catalogue.

Paging Buzby Berkeley, Mr. Berkeley To The Red Phone...

Can there be anything more decadently western, more American, even, than synchronized swimming?

These women are tremendous athletes, no doubt, though the event itself is even less a sport (and more a contest) than gymnastics.

But the suits, the makeup, the smiles evokes nothing so much as Busby Berkeley and his "Gold Diggers" movies. There's something poetic about the Russians and Chinese doing so well in it.

Old Movie Review: Are You In The House Alone?

I pulled this one out of the ether because of its provocative title, mirroring the "house" movies of the day, which somehow managed to capitalize on the slasher genre while being rated three stars and staying within the very, very narrow confines of what constituted "acceptable" in '70s TV terms. (Which, I assure you, were regarded as pretty appalling at the time and yet come nowhere near what's acceptable during "the family hour".)

It's about half tormented babysitter and then turns into half rape-prosecution advocacy story. I'm not really spoiling anything by telling you that: The movie opens with Kathleen Beller (playing "Gail") being wheeled out of the house claiming she's been raped and that no one will believe her.

That's what you call "a hook".

We then see the events leading up to the opening event, which are photographer Gail and her new sensitive boyfriend "Steve" (Scott Colomby, who would go on to limited fame in the Porky's series) working out their teen-age angst about sex and relationships. Gail has just broken up with jerky "E.K." (Randy Stumpf) because she wouldn't go all the way with him. ("Sleep with" being the operative, acceptable phrase of the day.)

Since the mystery is "who's going to rape Gail?", we are treated to E.K.'s jerkiness, inappropriate comments from her photography teacher, leering from her best friend's boyfriend, the incredibly rich and good looking Lance--Harvey--Phil! (Whatever, it's Dennis Quaid). If they'd made it five years later it would've included inappropriate touching from her father.

Meanwhile, someone with access to her locker and full knowledge of her schedule has been leaving her threatening notes and making creepy phone calls saying, that's right, "Are you in the house alone?" Keeping things from getting too tense are a lot of discussions about sex. And ultra-casual atmosphere about threats fostered by school counselor Ellen Travolta. (John's eldest sister, yes. It's the '70s. Get used to it.)

Ultra-casual? Well, where now we have zero tolerance, back then it was 100% tolerance.

Gail's mom, Anne, is played by 35-year-old Blythe Danner. Because 30-something actresses used to play moms to girls in their late teens back in the '70s, and we'll just ignore that Kathllen Beller--and Quaid, and Colomby--was, like, 22 and only about 13 years younger at the time. Beller does a good job acting young, though.

The acting is good all around, actually, snark aside. Anne is going through her own difficulties with husband Neil (Oscar-winner Tony Bill, who was a producer on The Sting and still acts, directs and produces.) The direction deftly defuses most of the tension, however.

There are some interesting (for the time) directorial techniques, like a little less reliance on establishing shots than was the norm. (Today, establishing shots are short and sweet, if used at all; we're expected to understand that the character who was at home in scene A and at the police station in scene B used some means of conveyance--say, an automobile--to get from home to the police station, found a place to park it, walked into the building, and made the customary greetings, without actually being shown all that.) But the whole thing feels like an "ABC Afterschool Movie".

Except for the sex. No, they don't show anything, but after refusing to sleep with E.K. (despite going out for, like, six months) she ends up sleeping with Steve after a few days. It's love, you see. (This is foreshadowed, even: Their first date is to see Three Days of the Condor which features Faye Dunaway (I think?) sleeping with Robert Redford after knowing him for two days.

Then, when she's raped, we get all the angles on how hard it is to prosecute a rape case. (With Blythe Danner saying "It's because she's not a virgin!" though I must've missed how she found out.) The weirdest casting was Lois Hamilton as the police woman. I mean, she's all right, but she looks like a fashion model. You know, Farrah (PBUH) hair, worn down, obvious makeup, etc.

And it gets weirder at this point, and very Nancy Drew. Gail, devastated by the attack (of course), goes from hiding out to going back to school and concocting a scheme to catch her rapist. She's not even particularly depressed, apparently.

Resilience, people. Look into it.

The movie you can take or leave, but it is a kind of time capsule: fashions, hairstyles, a complete absence of digital technology. This is what we used to do before cable, kiddies.

The Spectacular Now

It's possible that I am a traitor to my generation. At the time, I found a huge number of the popular teen films of my youth flat-out gross. Not just vulgar, crude and artless, but morally appalling. By the time Say Anything... closed out the '80s teen-flick-fest, I was just singularly unimpressed with the canon.

I still watched Ferris Beuller with my kids, but about the mid-'90s, the casual ease with which he lied to his parents started to make me really uncomfortable. (I didn't have the kind of parents you needed to lie to to take a day off, and I am not that kind of parent, so I can't relate to a lot of the teen angst, admittedly.)

What I'm getting at is that the modern flicks seem to be far better. Young actors, as I've noted, are leaps and bounds better than they were before the proliferation of cable created a crucible for them to hone their skills. Production values are phenomenal.

Also, since it's (roughly) my generation who are the parents now, we're more-or-less complete washouts. Less "square" and more burnt-out losers—actual drags on their children. And not in the abstract off-screen way of The Breakfast Club—although I guess all kids are Bender now—but in a more in-your-face Harry Dean Stanton way, where they're stealing your paper route money for booze and crack and whatever.

(Have you noticed I'm digressing longer and longer before getting to the actual movie these days? I have. I assume it's my transition into old age where I tell long, meandering stories that don't go anywhere.)

Anyway, The Spectacular Now is the story of charming drunkard high school senior Sutter who breaks up with his fun-loving girlfriend, Cassidy, and ends up hooking up with bookish, unpopular Aimee.

Aimee is played by Shailene Woodly, who would not be out of place on a "top 100 hottest" list of a men's magazine, but they have her without any makeup and her hair back in the early scenes so...sure, why not. (Acting plays a part here, too, snark aside.)

Miles Teller plays the likable buffoon, Sutter, who has a Live For The Now philosophy (hence, the title) and a lot of pent up anger toward his mom (Jennifer Jason Leigh, herself a starlet of '80s teen flicks) regarding absentee dad (ultimately played by Kyle Chanlder, Zero Dark Thirty).

The movie follows Sutter and Aimee through their rather sweet relationship, which is marred only by Sutter's alcoholism and adherence to his "live for the moment" philosophy. And if Sutter was originally using Aimee as a rebound, he becomes increasingly attached to her, as she sees in him the potential to do greater things.

There's actually a very interesting perversion there, as Sutter has a job that he does well, but it's actually a sign of irresponsibility, since he's using it as a way to never have to do anything more challenging in his life. It's not Molly Ringwald working at the record store in Pretty In Pink. It feels more like Glengarry Glen Ross.

Anyway, you have a substance-dependent and an enabler, and there's not a lot of plausible ways to end this story happily. I understand the book ends unhappily, in fact. There are some scenes of near crushing despair toward the end of this movie, but it does at least allow for the possibility that our hero is not hopelessly screwed for the rest of his short, brutish and nasty life.

The Flower was okay with it, though hoping for something funnier and lighter-hearted, which I guess is one thing the teen movies of my youth had over these newer ones. The Boy liked it as did I.

The characters are likable and have some depth and their own arcs, and a lot happens in the space of 90 minutes. In a big picture sense, if the teen movies of the '80s were all about people living in the now because their futures were bright (because they were bright, young and full of energy), this movie contrasts that with a picture of someone who really does live totally in the now.

And even though he's a very decent fellow, he's not wearing shades because his future's so bright. It's because he's hungover.

Saw V: I Want To Play A Game (but I get to be the shoe)

We went to Saw V last night--would've gone sooner but we went with a buddy of mine and his wife, who are difficult to schedule.

The Saw series, at its best, is a creative vehicle for a series of suspenseful situations. The violence done is primarily to make the consequences that much more dire and the suspense therefore greater. (I mean, you may be in suspense whether you're going to get a piece of cake at the office party, but the consequences are not dire enough for most of us for this to be a compelling situation. Office Space notwithstanding.)

They've done a pretty good job retconning the series, which was obviously meant to be a one-off. (You don't make your villain fatally ill if you plan to continue forward.) The elaborateness of the set-up suggests more work than a terminally ill man could do. Actually, I'd imagine it would take a team of set designers.

What this means is that, here in the fifth installment, we're actually going through all four previous movies to show how things were done. This is less compelling, actually, than previous movies showing random people placed in life-threatening situations. The part of the movie that actually involves five random people struggling for survival is the better part of the movie, and shows that the formula itself can work.

Except for the first scene and the last two scenes, it's not really that gory. The first scene is overdone, gore-wise, I think to make sure you know that you're in a Saw movie. The penultimate scene involves voluntary blood donation of the sort that has made the movie series famous. The ultimate scene is actually quite short, but effectively shocking.

Overall, not bad. For the fifth film in what has been a pretty good film series, well-nigh miraculous. Costas Mandylor is no Tobin Bell, though, and the movie's attempt to convince us that he's been around for all five movies (he hasn't, just since the third one) is not entirely successful.

I managed to differentiate Mandylor from Scott Paterson, though despite this being Paterson's second Saw movie, and me having watched "Gilmore Girls" for several seasons, I didn't recognize him as diner owner Luke. (I'm bad at that; I just mistook Lon Chaney Jr for Leo Gordon, and there's 15 years between them.)

And my heart (and other body parts) is warmed to see Betsy Russell back as Mrs. Ex-Jigsaw. Betsy Russell was a heart-throb for those of us who watched movies like Avenging Angel or Private School rather than Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Betsy--what an awesome first name for an '80s actress!--gets filmed in harsh light with bad makeup, but she's still a knockout. She retired in the late '80s/early '90s to take care of her kids, so perhaps we'll be seeing more of her in the future.

The real problem with sequels, of course, is that they tend to dilute the strength of the original concept. Jigsaw's motivation comes from his terminal illness, and then (starting in the third movie) his tragic family history. Shawnee Smith's character made a poor substitute for John, since her motivation was entirely self-centered. Costas Mandylor's character seems even weaker, though I suppose they can retcon that in in the next sequels, but those things always have a bolted-on feeling.

Plus, come on: Tobin Bell is one of the most distinctive character actors working, and is marvellously compelling in this role, a sort of modern "mad scientist" type. Mandylor is too conventionally good looking. (I believe they used his voice in the last tape.)

But, eh, I'll be there next Halloween.

Dwaaaaaaaaaaa!

Finally, at long last, Duckman is available on DVD!

I've mentioned the show before--I thought including the fact that there was no legal way to buy the series, you had to give money to bootleggers, but if I did, I can't find that post.

Jason Alexander plays Duckman, a widowed, incompetent, skirt-chasing detective in a world that is a mixture of humans and anthropomorphized animals, sort-of trying to raise his family (a big dumb kid named Ajax, voiced by Dweezil Zappa and his conjoined genius twin sons voiced, originally, by the late Dana Hill and the always marvellous E.G. Daly).

It's kind of a super-dysfunctional, depressing extension of "The Simpson's". In fact, Klasky-Csupo, the original Simpsons animators, created "Duckman". Imagine Marge dying on Homer, and Patty and Selma moving in, and you've got a start. Also, imagine Springfield as a more realistic, gritty, big city where almost everyone is selfish, greedy, short-sighted and cruel.

Sounds awful, doesn't it?

And yet, for me, this series truly worked. If you look at Homer Simpson, the engine that drives that groundbreaking television show, you see a person who's really rather despicable. He's stupid, mean, greedy, lazy, violent and on and on and on. He's not only dangerous when he means well, he often just plain doesn't mean well. Yet beyond the brilliant writing of the early years, it must be confessed that the show succeeds because we identify with homer.

We identify with his flaws and appreciate his redemption through his approximately once-per-episode acts of love. And we're hopeful that others can see the good in us, despite our flaws, and find something like the love Homer gets from Marge or Lisa and Maggie, or even Bart. (One of the reasons the show has gotten stale is that it's harder to believe in redemption when nothing changes, and the show has played out its own staticness both as humor and meta-humor.)

"Duckman" goes further. Duckman is driven by selfish short-sighted lust and avarice, much like Homer, and his redemption is much smaller and more fleeting. Duckman's world is darker: Unlike the sort of patchwork, plot-convenient history of "The Simpsons", Duckman's history is part of his makeup. He was started down the road to debauchery by his flighty, cruel mother.

By the time he's in high school, he's become enough of a tormenter himself to create an arch-rival: King Chicken (voiced by Tim Curry!).

As an adult, he's locked in a depraved downward spiral until he meets his wife Beatrice, one of the few truly pure characters of the show.

When she dies (before the series starts), he continues his descent into boozing, floozing, and generally being a jerk.

And yet.

The world is the much bigger jerk. While Duckman brings his problems on himself, it has to be said that the world is gamed against him. Parking laws so convoluted no one can read them. Taxes. Obsessive neighbors. Vacuous celebrities.

Any reform he tries is met with a big smackdown by the universe. Whereas Homer is just lazy, Duckman has the character to fight against the machine. He just doesn't have the wherewithal, physically, financially or psychically to win, nor even to survive a brush with life's many irrational obstacles in tact.

At a time when it was actually pretty edgy, Duckman was relentlessly politically incorrect, and the show never missed an opportunity to have a ridiculously over-endowed sex kitten giggling over some lurid double-entendre.

Jason Alexander's broad voice work does the trick here. Whether happy or raving or depressed or afraid (Duckman's signature yell is "Dwaaaaaaaaa!") Alexander makes this the performance of his career. (Duckman is far more lovable than George Costanza.)

I was pleased to see that he's listed on the special features, since back 10+ years ago or so, when there was supposed to be a Duckman game, he stopped it because the voice was so wearing. (Which may be code for "give me more money", but either way the game was killed.)

The series ended on a damned cliffhanger, too, but perhaps the series DVDs might spur some interest in a movie that could provide some closure.

Others in the standout cast include Greg Berger as the incredibly deep-voiced Cornfed Pig, the Watson to Duckman's Holmes, except that he's super-smart, competent in a wide-range of fields, and a virgin. Nancy Travis plays Duckman's sweet wife Beatrice in a couple of episodes, but primarily is the voice of the ultimate harridan Bernice, her sister. Ben Stein is the insufferable PhD neighbor who can't help but constantly remind everyone he's a PhD.

Guest stars included John Astin and Bobcat Goldthwait as recurring characters, and an assortment of oddities from Courtney Thorne-Smith playing herself to Maureen McGovern as the singing voice of Ajax.

I couldn't, in good conscience, recommend this to everyone. It's just too sleazy, too cynical, too dark. (Of course, I couldn't recommend a non-sleazy, uncynical, light movie for everyone either.)

But I recommend it for me. And can't wait to pick it up!

The Secret In Their Eyes

A newly retired Argentinian justice agent decides to write a novel and picks for his topic the one case he couldn't solve. Or perhaps more accurately, a reluctantly retired justice agent decides to use writing a novel as a pretext for trying to resolve a lot of loose ends in his life.

Such is the premise of Juan Jose Campanella's El Secreto De Sus Ojos—The Secret in Their Eyes—which takes place in 1999, but flashes back a lot to the '70s when the murder and first investigation took place. In a rather odd, old-fashioned choice, we're mostly supposed to just accept the actors as being young, not a lot is done in terms of makeup or CGI (a la Benjamin Button).

In fact, there are a number of places in this movie where things seem rather low budget. The film quality itself reminds of '70s Kodachrome, there's no THX (it might as well have been mono, and the camera doesn't do the swoops and twirls that are lingua franca today.

But the movie works. Well.

Well enough to win the foreign-language Oscar.

And well enough to stay with you, if you're the sort of person to pick at the loose threads that are often subtly resolved. Also, subtitles and a non-spanish-phobia are helpful. For example, a key element of the film involves a rickety typewriter and the difference between "TEMO" (I'm afraid) and "TE AMO" (I love you).

The Boy had a difficult time with it. He liked it, but he didn't entirely get it. The Old Man loved it. I, too, was won over by this strangely awkward and sincere film.

Our hero, Benjamin, is a crusty middle-aged middle-class detective working on a rape/murder case (he tries to palm off) when our heroine, the fiery Irene, a vibrant young upper-class lawyer joins the department. (The actual actors, Ricardo Darin, 52, and Soledad Villamil, 40, rely heavily on something called acting to convince you they're closer to early 40s and late 20s, respectively.)

Benjamin is immediately smitten, but he's too old and too low class for Irene.

This isn't a plot thread you see much in America since about the '30s, and why all those remakes of the old melodramas never work. (After all, when the upper class is making porn tapes, the whole concept of "high class" is a wee bit strained.)

Rounding out the main cast is Guillermo Francella, the brilliant Argentinian comic, as the low class drunkard Pablo. This guy is golden-age material: He manages to be both funny and deeply sympathetic, without being maudlin or pathetic, which is not something you see well done any more.

He's the one reminding Benjamin that Irene is out of his league in so many ways. This is very helpful for people like me, in the American audience, who would probably not get it without the exposition.

Between the three of them, including a very gutsy move by Irene, they manage to catch the killer and send him to prison.

But, wait! If that were all, then whence the unresolved issues that power the movie?

Well, as it turns out, a few years later, Argentina has one of its periodic revolutions. The murdering raping psychopath is found to be useful to the new regime and thus ends up getting out of jail and into the secret service. (Once again, a weird concept to an American, though perhaps strangely like peering into America's future.)

Some very awful things follow.

I can't really talk about how things proceed without being spoily but suffice to say, I did not see the ending coming till about 2 minutes before it came. And the Benjamin/Irene romance resolution isn't what I was expecting either.

But this is one of those rare movies that manages to keep one foot squarely in the mystery/thriller camp, and one squarely in the romance camp. Themes cross-pollinate without being creepy. The very title The Secret In Their Eyes refers both to the criminal element and, as we see at various points, the tells of a smitten, unrequited lover.

Good stuff, and I liked it more the more time has passed. Even if it isn't very American.

Argo Eff Yourself

Ben Affleck is at it again, directing and starring in yet another interesting and entertaining picture, and proving that not only does he actually have some skill at a director, he gets a better performance out of himself than other directors!

Almost five years ago, one of this blog's first movie reviews was Gone, Baby, Gone. The Town came out when I was working the three jobs and doing the weekend commute thing, so I don't think I have a review of it here, but it was also solid.

Argo is probably the best work he's done to date. And except for the opening narrative, which explains how the Iran hostage crisis was all our fault, and the closing voice-over from Jimmy Carter, it's actually a pretty pro-America movie.

The story, for those of you who weren't around in 1979, is centered around the Iranian hostage crisis, when terrorists stormed the American embassy and captured everyone and held them for 444 days. It probably didn't cost Carter the election—he was going down hard anyway—but it sure didn't help him to have Ted Koppel making his career and establishing "Nightline" as a serious news show by harping on it night after night.

Hell, Howard Hessman did a thing on it as his opening monologue on "Saturday Night Live".

Yes, children, there was a time when the leftist media would criticize lefty politcians.

I digress. Argo concerns six Americans who weren't in the embassy who found refuge in the Canadian Embassy, and the CIA planning to get them out. Ben Affleck plays Tony Mendez, master spy, whose specialty is extraction, and who quickly dismantles the proposed plans for getting the hapless Americans out of Iran.

The plan they hit on—and it helps to emphasize that this is based on a true story—is to pose as a Canadian film-making team in Iran to film a sci-fi epic called,  you guessed it, Argo!

This may offend or shock some of you but, in fact, Mr. Affleck takes some liberties with the truth. And there have been a lot of Monday-morning film-producers bitching about this. For example, the Canadians were far more active and important than the film shows.

But this is the sort of thing film-makers do all the time to create focus. (Steven Soderbergh probably wouldn't have done that.) Similarly, the ending is a nail-biter race against the bad guys that never happened. But it's a great climax.

Affleck gave Mendez personal and profesisonal problems he doesn't seem to have had, which was probably gratuitous, but since it was his ass on the line, Affleck can be excused for making more time for ACTING. It's not the strongest part of the flick but it would be churlish to begrudge him that.

The acting is wonderful: John Goodman plays makeup artist emeritus John Chambers, whom he strongly resembles; Alan Arkin is an archetypal (fictional) producer past his prime; Bryan Cranston, Clea DuVall, Tate Donovan, and lots of other hard-working actors who always seem to turn in good work and enliven a movie.

The hostages have plenty of drama to act out, of course, with Goodman and Arkin providing comic relief—and great chemistry—as Hollywood old-timers. Bonus: An abundance of porn-staches and feathered hair.

Double-secret-super-bonus: Adrienne Barbeau as a sexy space queen!

Adding to the fun, if you were there, is all the 1979 references, even if slightly discombobulated. Like, "Battlestar Galactica" had been canceled by the time of the hostage crisis, but there are Cylons on the movie lot. I guess, arguably, they could have been from the short-lived "Galactica '80" series but mostly, I think they were there to emphasize the popularity of sci-fi post-Star Wars. (Said presence is strongly felt, of course.)

They even matched the color scheme to '70s. Not just interior design stuff, but the film itself had a bit of that ugly brown/yellow palette that was favored in the "realistic" movies of the day. (But without the ugliness, happily.) All that was missing was a score that was brass-heavy.

Anyway, overall, a thriller that manages to be tense and fun and warm. Quite an achievement really.

The Boy liked it a lot. The Flower liked it a lot. I liked it a lot.

I just wish they hadn't tried to pin this whole thing on the USA. The narrative glibly refers to how the US and Britain interfered with a legitimately elected rule who "nationalized" the country's oil wells, returning the oil to The People.

Seriously? "Nationalize" is just another word for "steal". And after being "nationalized" wealth ends up being squandered. Damn little of it gets to the people. And I can't help but think, from the spate of Iranian movies we've seen, that things haven't been so rosy for Iran even though it's been free of evil Brit and US control for over 30 years.

But, like I said, that only bugged me a little.

Oz: The Great And Powerful

Theory: Producer Joe Roth decided he could make a Tim Burton/Johnny Depp movie without either Tim Burton or Johnny Depp and it would be just as good.

Conclusion: Tragically, he was right.

Neither The Boy nor The Flower wanted to see this, but The Barb, being seven, was primarily concerned about whether the flying monkeys would be too scary. The Flower wobbled, almost heading out with us at the last second, but got cold feet and bailed.

The Boy yelled "YOLO!" and ended realizing the shortcomings of that philosophy. I said no fewer than six times afterwards "You didn't have to come with us!"

The Barb declared it the greatest movie EVER!

Oz is directed by Sam Raimi, which is why I wanted to go see it. Raimi's movies are almost always interesting. The Quick and the Dead, for example, is highly watchable for all its flaws. Spiderman 3 is the only movie of his which I would dread watching again. I figured it would be a plodding fantasy like, say, Jack The Giant Slayer or Roth's Alice In Wonderland, but Snow White and the Huntsman is more on the mark.

It's not that it's plodding; it has that going for it. It's just that some of the artistic choices are so staggeringly bad, the movie never fully recovers.

James Franco is no Johnny Depp. I generally like Franco, whether he's trapped under a rock or being assassinated by a hitman, but while handsome, he doesn't have the raw charisma needed for the part. He's a carnival magician who flits from town-to-town and woman-to-woman, and while he's believable enough as a womanizer (is there any chance he could not be in real life?), he just doesn't have the raw charisma, stage presence or the voice to play a great huckster.

He always seems like a decent guy, which may be the problem. Honestly, I'd have a hard time thinking of who could do this role these days. Johnny Depp's a little old. That would make him 70 when Dorothy Shows up. (Frank Morgan was around 50 in the original.) Jack Black, too. Actually, even Franco's a bit old.

I dunno. Channing Tatum? Seriously, I have no clue what 30-ish male actor has the necessary stage presence. Depp 20 years ago was just developing that presence. In fact, Depp's portrayal of Ed Wood is closer to the mark than Franco here.

Sorry to harp on it but in a movie about Oz, the portrayal of Oz himself is pretty important.

Even so, the opening black-and-white in Kansas is one of the stronger parts of the movie. The backstory was okay, even if a bit eye-roll inducing. The story introduces Dorothy's mother as Annie, the love of Oz's life, whom he can't commit to because he's got greater ambitions...that...uh...she wants him to live up to but he can't. Or something.

The need to connect the stories struck me as cheesy, but I'm not 100% sure that's not from the books. L. Frank Baum was the honey badger of retconning. First book? The Emerald City isn't emerald at all. It's a normal city where everyone is required to wear green lenses. Second book? It's emerald.

When we get to Oz, the second staggering artistic failure emerges: The Whimsy Woods (I think) are a garish nightmare of CGI, completely devoid of any verisimilitude. The Boy pointed out astutely that this kind of splashy, garish, and completely unnecessary sequence is akin to the mandatory sex scene in movies of the '70s/'80s.

It's really and truly awful. And the 3D is irritating. (We saw it 2D, so it was stupid as well as irritating.)

Then we're hit with the next big casting disaster: Mila Kunis. We generally receive Miss Kunis favorably here at the 'strom, having occupied the niche of "World's Coolest Girlfriend" in a number of movies, but when we first hear her (offscreen), she sounds like she's off the set of "That '70s Show". The makeup is troweled on so thick (or maybe it's CGI), she looks completely artificial. She does a little better later on.

Then we're introduced to Frank, a friendly flying monkey (Zach Braff) who becomes Oz's companion. I was cringing at this point but...this actually works out okay. It's not great, but given the capacity for "Frank" to turn into another Jar Jar or Ewok or other cutesy irritating sidekick, it's sort of amazing that I didn't want to "Fluffy and Uranus" Frank by the end.

Similarly, China Girl (a girl literally made of china) should've been both creepy and cloying, but Raimi very deftly handles this.

Apparently, he eschewed motion capture and had the actors do their parts, which were filmed and then rendered independently by real-live animators. This was a solid choice.

Next we get Rachel Weisz who's been growing on me of late. She's all right.

The cast is rounded out with Michelle Williams, who is the brightest spot in the cast. I was not a huge fan of her Marilyn, you may recall, but she imbues her portrayal of Glinda with a purity that recalls Billie Burke (who was 56 at the time of the 1939 flick!) without a trace of camp or irony.

After the initial shocks, the movie actually works pretty well because of its absolute sincerity. Raimi is a true believer and his earnestness is precisely what pulls iffy premises like The Quick and the Dead into the watchable category, and comic book flicks like Spider-Man 2 into greatness.

The Oz books are dubious in a lot of ways: They're not surreal, like Wonderland, but they're not fantasy-realist, like Middle Earth or Narnia. I can't recall if they were actually violent—violence in kidlit being a non-issue back then—but if memory serves there were occasional outbursts, with the overall inclination being to resolve things via absurdity and bluff rather than actual conflict.

Raimi deftly handles The Battle for Emerald City without turning it into Minas Tirith, although the resemblances to Army of Darkness are unavoidable. Oz in Oz is much like Ash in the 13th century. Still there's less violence and more chicanery, which is really keeping with Baum.

Yeah, we hated it. We really couldn't get over the initial awfulness. The Boy was really turned off by Kunis, though he was somewhat more favorable toward Franco than I. We both conceded that we didn't not care at the end, which is an accomplishment, really.

And, again the seven-year-old thought it was the greatest movie ever! (And wasn't scared, which has been a real issue for her.)

Music by Danny Elfman. In case the Burton-y-ness of it wasn't obvious enough.

How To Train Your Dragon

Back when I was trying to sell kids' books to publishers, waaaaay back in the '80s, the various publishers would send out rules of what not to bother sending. Tops on most of their lists? "DON'T SEND ANYTHING WITH DRAGONS."

Apparently there was a glut.

I didn't have anything with dragons but I sort of thought it was dickish.

Relevance to the movie How To Train Your Dragon? None, really, except that given this is based on a series of books released in the past decade, I guess the ban is up.

Which brings us to the latest venture from the team that brought you Lilo and Stitch. L&S is an underrated Disney film which managed to unselfconsciously break out of the mold of "young person doesn't meet societal/parental expectations and successfully forges own way in world" that dominated their 'toons since The Little Mermaid. It also used a lot of Elvis unironically.

This is the story of young Hiccup, a Norseman of some sort, who lives on an average Norseman island except for being plagued by dragons. Swarmed, even. So, the young of the village train to become dragonslayers.

Naturally, Hiccup's not really up for that. (We wouldn't have a children's story if he embraced the slaughter of dragon's wholeheartedly and was good at it, would we? Not these days!) He's more of an inventor; and he invents, essentially, a ballista. He manages to hit a dragon—the particular type of dragon so fast and destructive that no one has ever even seen one—and no one believes him.

He stumbles upon the injured beast, though, and discovers something other than the completely unrepentant destroyer of Norse villages he's been taught to believe. The subsequent relationship is...problematic.

This is a fast-paced, sometimes funny, nice-looking film. It walks the line between too cute, too much Kumbaya, and brutal fairly facilely. In that sense, much like Lilo & Stitch, where Stitch was both cute and a destructive monster, but far less cute. (There is a real villain in the peace, and it's fairly unapologetic in its scariness.)

Jay Baruchel (best known to me as the skinny kid in Million Dollar Baby) plays the skinny Hiccup while America Ferrara plays his jealous peer, Astrid. Astrid is one of those now clichéd overachieving girls who just wants to kill some dragons and is increasingly pissed off by Hiccup's strange increasing facility with them.

Supporting characters include Gerard Butler, as Hiccup's predictably not-understanding father (speaking of clichés, didn't we just see James Caan do this in Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs?); Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Jonah Hill (kinda sorta doing Jack Black) as the skinny and fat kid vikings—though at least they made Jonah Hill the skinny(-er) one and Mintz-Plasse the fat one; Kirsten Wiig as the twin of—

Wait. Do you care? Does anyone? Why do they keep putting celebrities in animated films when a professional voice actor is probably going to be better (and way cheaper)?

Are you people actually lining up to see How To Train Your Dragon because Gerard Butler was so hot in 300? What the hell is wrong with you?

Or is it just some Hollywood trend?

I hope it's the latter. I get why actors like the voice gigs. No makeup, no costume, just hamming it up in front of a bunch of A/V geeks who are probably all starstruck.

Anyway, the movie was a hit with everyone, from the Old Man, to The Boy—who didn't expect to like it—to both the Flower and the Barbarienne. And me. It's a solid piece of work. Rewatchable. The Old Man objected to the cuteness of the main dragon, and I could see his point. The dragons were all a hair too cute for me.

Curiously, he preferred Shrek 4, but he's a definite outlier in that regard.

Interesting side-note: We saw this back in mid-June at the bargain theater and it's still playing there. That's a good sign.

Moscow, Belgium

I told The Boy when we left the theater that he could probably claim to be the only 13-year-old American boy to see the Belgian-made Dutch-language movie Moscow, Belgium. Sage that he is, he said, "It doesn't matter what it's about as long as you care about the characters."

Dayamn. When I was 13? I was all about plot. Plot and boobies. (OK, I threw that in for Troop.)

Anyway, this is the wrong title for the movie. The Dutch title is Aanrijding in Moscow, which means "Collision In Moscow", I think. That's a better title but stupid Americans would think it was a Russian movie, I suppose. Not a Belgian movie. In Dutch.

I don't know why I'm fixated on that. I guess because I was listening to it and thinking, "That sounds Germanic more than Frankish," which is the sort of thing that bugs me. The last Belgian movie I saw (the fine Memory of a Killer) was in Frisian.

I digress.

This is the story of 43-year-old Matty, whose husband Werner has wandered off to have an affair with a younger woman but who won't divorce her and sort of hints about coming back (for six months!) and has made her miserable, raising her three kids alone except for the alternate weekend.

The story begins when frazzled Matty gets into an accident with 29-year-old truck driver Johnny and is taken aback by the fact that Johnny is strongly attracted to her. This is interesting because she's a complete shrew to him.

In fact, she's rather unpleasant throughout the beginning of the movie. On top of anger, sarcasm, bitterness, they also do the "no makeup and hair" thing so she looks a haggard 43 indeed.

But with his persistence, we start to see Matty change and get a glimpse in to what's made her so angry. (We also later get a full-on view of her body in a mirror which I think most even 20-something women would kill for.) And when she gives in (sort of), she has to take a hard look at what her husband has done and how she's let it affect her.

There's a curious element to this movie in that none of the characters are portrayed as victims. The cheap shot--the Hollywood formula--would be to have Werner be a jerk and Johnny be a saint, but Werner digs up dirt on Johnny and we find out he's far from a saint. And then, just to make things a little more complicated, the movie shows us Johnny being a jerk. Meanwhile, Werner brings back a lot of the old memories that made Matty attracted to him in the first place.

Werner is especially jerky, I guess, since he seems to not want to let go of either Matty or the girlfriend.

There's no "happily ever after" but this movie is hopeful--optimistic, even. We know the characters may be happy, but it won't necessarily be perfect or easy. And there's the subtext, or at least one subtext: Easy isn't always better.

There's another interesting bit of tension: Werner is an art professor; Johnny is a truck-driver. I somehow thought the enlightened peoples of Europe were beyond class wars as snobbery, but this movie brings the bigotry to the forefront. And it shows the prejudice going both ways as Werner turns out to be an insufferable snob--as does Johnny in his own way.

Ultimately, The Boy is right: While this movie is positively prosaic in its subject matter, ultimately you care about the characters, and so it works.

If you see only one Dutch-language Belgian film this year, make it this one.

Manic Monday Apocalypso: But, Hey, It's Not Boring

Loudon Wainwright, whom I frequently quote here, has a song called "Talkin' Big Apple '75" where he talks about New York City in a Dylan-esque sing-speak w/harmonica. At the end of the song, he lists all these terrible things about New York--and it's a long list--but then ends with "But, hey! It's not boring!"

Which brings us to this week's MMA: The End Of The World As We Know It. Instapundit linked two apocalyptic scenarios last week (the Global Weimar and yet more about America losing its superpower status, which I can't find, dangit), and of course, a lot of us are a tad agitated about the biggest spending bill in history at a time when we can hardly afford it.

And yet.

The Weimar guy demolishes his own credibility by suggesting "green" companies are going to come out on top. Companies that use resources wisely and not wastefully may come out on top, of course, but I think history favors the rapacious. All out "green"? Unlikely: If you start from an arbitrary and illogical premise, your chances of advancing very far are remote.

The Russian-American guy who write about the end of the USA as a superpower looks at the macro-similarities between the USA and the USSR. And maybe he's right, but a few things bugged me about this essay.

One being, why would we care? The USA has a strong isolationist streak. We, the People, never really wanted to be a superpower in the first place. That's why it's so difficult for us to wage war: We have to get riled up. For most of its history the US has not been a superpower, and has really not cared to be a superpower. (A lot of people think our serious troubles began when we started down that path after WWII.)

But the more important one is a micro-level issue, and it's one that makes me generally optimistic for the future, and not overly concerned with India or China or Russia. It's a matter of freedom.

Not to get all William Wallace here, but America is still the freest country in the world. If you look at regulation and taxation, you might find that we're not, on the books, as free as some other places, depending on the metric used. But as a people, freedom is part of our character.

That is, we expect to not be inhibited from social and economic movement. Can the Indians say that? We expect to not be geographically or politically constrained. Can the Russians and Chinese say that?

Not the governments: They'll happily lie about how free the people are. But can the people--do the people say that? And do they believe it? Is it part of their makeup?

One thing I believe is radically different between today and the Great Depression of 80 years ago: American entrepreneurship is vastly higher than it used to be. It doesn't matter nearly as much as it used to if a big company goes under.

I know that some are constantly fretting about the divide between rich and poor, but the real issue is: Who thinks they can create wealth? Alongside of our saturation of sexual imagery, and food options, and diet options, there's an undercurrent of "Anyone willing to work smart and put some effort into it can make some money, maybe even big money."

The ennui in Europe is characterized by workers striking because the government isn't expansive enough. Here in America, we get upset when the government expands too much. Europe's democracies belie its monarchial history. They want the king to take care of them.

Of course we have that here, as something we've imported and something we inculcate through the schools--how can any government be expected to not do so?--but at our core, we're insulted by the notion. (I'll bet this is something big-state progressives never consider: One reason some conservatives oppose welfare is that it implies that we can take care of our own, or that the government can do it better.)

In my Best of 2008 post, I talk about Defiance, and in the comments you can see that it's basically about a historical apocalypse for the Jews. But their culture survives, and they survive, which is something fairly unique to Judaism.

Whatever happens, I think the culture of freedom can survive as well.

And, hey, whatever happens: it won't be boring.

Bernie

I try not to use the phrase "pitch-perfect" too much but I can't think of a better way to describe the casting of Bernie, the true story of the world's nicest man and his encounter with the world's meanest woman.

Jack Black plays Bernie, the guy-of-indeterminate-sexual-orientation who manages to befriend Shirley MacLaine's Marjorie, with Matthew McConnaughey as Danny Buck, the politically ambitious DA who wants to see Bernie hang when Marjorie goes missing.

Richard Linklater's (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, School of Rock) film feels a bit like a Chris Guest mockumentary, with parts of the story being told in retrospect by the townspeople whose appearance and cadences seem to genuine to be actors.

But this isn't a comedy. It's funny in parts. Darkly funny in others. Funny weird in still others. And it's provocatively philosophical in a very deep way.

Bernie's a successful guy on most observable levels. He's an assistant funeral home director who is a master at...uh...corpse preparation. (Makeup and clothing,) But once working in this small town mortuary, he also brings a more religious tone to the business. And when things get awkward or slow during a funeral, he's there to smooth it out, or to lead the people in song.

Because he has a lovely singing voice. Lovely enough that he's soon performing in the town's community theater. And not long after that, he's directing the plays (musicals, natch).

Wherever you look, he's there helping out. And people might have some doubts about certain aspects of his personality, nobody seems to care too much.

Why, when an old man in the town dies, he's at the widow's house the next day with flowers and condolences, making sure she's feeling okay.

And that's where the trouble begins.

It's in this way that he meets Marjorie, a rich old woman married to a mean old man who dies, revealing that however mean he was, she is even worse. But now she's all alone. She's estranged from her family, which has tried to sue her to get her money. She has no friends, although there are a few people who sort of tolerate her, like her business manager.

But to Bernie, why, this just means she's even more in need of a friend than anyone.

 There's a reason the cast has to be perfect for this story. Bernie is just very good with people. He upsells them on caskets—but he does it because he truly and genuinely believes it's respectful to the dead. He's devout. He's sincere. He's generous.

His only serious flaw is that he's a compulsive shopper, but even there he just gives everything away.

Very, very few actors could make this work. Just the slightest hint of unctuousness and you could end up despising Bernie faster than a California hillside catches fire. (Er, maybe a Texas one, since this takes place in Texas. Do they have hills there?)

But that wouldn't be very interesting at all. If Bernie were just a greasy hustler on the make, this would be a horrible tale barely worth telling. But Bernie is good. At every turn, given the opportunity to do something good or right, he'll do the right thing.

Well, almost. Which is what raises deep, and moving, questions.

This isn't going to be a blockbuster hit, of course. It's not exactly escapist, though its picture of a small town like one not many of us live in any more. It's not a comedy, either; really, it's a tragedy. A light tragedy, if such a thing is possible.

The Boy and The Flower both enjoyed it as well, though I think not as much as I did.