Saw IV

The things you do for love.

Score: 2.0

Gone, Baby, Gone

The best part of Dennis Lehane's detective novels, of which, Gone, Baby, Gone is the most heart-wrenching, is that they deal directly with moral questions, and refuse to offer satisfying answers. Characters make tough choices, and live with the consequences, never knowing if they've done the right thing and content to just be able to sleep at night. The best part of Ben Affleck's directorial debut in the film adaptation of Gone Baby Gone is that he keeps that sense of ambiguity and moral confusion intact. The other thing that Affleck's adaptation has to recommend it is a deeply felt sense of place. One of the main characters in this story, and in Lehane's work in general, is the working class neighborhood of Dorchester. Affleck does a much better job of conveying the sights, sounds and people of that location than Clint Eastwood's critically acclaimed Lehane adaptation Mystic River. River, like most of Eastwood's movies, felt like it was filmed in a coffin, not a real place. Affleck trains his camera on the rugged faces of the Boston white working class, paying special attention to the kinds of manly rituals that define social relationships in that kind of environment. One thing that blunted my enjoyment of the film is the fact that the wrenching moral quandaries at the heart of it were already familiar to me from the book. Also, some people have complained that the plot machinations in the middle of the film are less-than-clear, and I don't feel that I can honestly evaluate them having read the book. My only real complaint about the movie is that Bubba Rogowski, a larger-than-life mad dog behemoth who looms large in all of Lehane's novels, who is practically a mythic figure in that world, is reduced in the film to a fat reject from the White Rapper Show.

Score: 8.4

The Darjeeling Limited

All of the things that make Wes Anderson films interesting, as well as predictable, are here in abundance, but with more 90 degree pans and more Indians. The one significant thematic difference between this film and Anderson's earlier work is that the "father" part of father/son dynamic that dominates the character interaction has been dead for a year. His three sons, played by Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman and Adrien Brody, take a "spiritual" trip to India to hash out their feelings. Along the way there are hijinx, terse exchanges, furtive romances, and sudden explosions of violence, all of it culminating in a moment of catharsis that set off a tuning fork in my heart, even though I should have known better.

Even with Anderson working at the top of his game behind the camera, and even with me being a huge sucker for what he tots around in his bag of tricks, The Darjeeling Limited failed to resonant fully. I think that a large part of the problem is that Anderson's characters are so closed-off and withholding that the film relys on visual metaphors to do the heavy lifting of depicting character development. In those moments the artifice of the film is revealed: you can see the wires, as it were, and it reminds you that the characters are really just puppets.

Still, there are sequences from the film that resonate deeply, and it contains some of Anderson's most assured, captivating visual filmmaking, and the "exotic" setting adds both a sense of novelty and some great opportunities for satire at the expense of the brothers, who think that they can buy "spirituality" in India as easily as bootleg shoes in a bazaar. More than anything else, though, The Darjeeling Limited left me wondering what Wes Anderson could do if he chose to move out of his self-constructed, Salinger-esque cinematic ghetto. What if, instead of documenting rich kids dealing with their asshole parents, he depicted spaceship pilots dealing with giant alien robots? It could be really cool: I'm sure he could work in a Kinks song somehow.

Score: 8.1

Into the Wild

I'll put it right out there at the jump: this movie made me cry. Not the slight welling around the eyes, the single trickling tear that sometimes blindsides me while watching a Pixar film, I'm talking about full on, wrenching sobs. Just like the last film that did this to me, Children of Men, I thought I'd been relatively unaffected during the actual movie....it was during the end credits that the enormity of the thing crashed into me. It's not just that the fate of Chris "Alexander Supertramp" McCandless is devastating to behold and tragic. Director Sean Penn creates a sense of identification with the character that makes you care deeply for his fate. What made the film so astoundingly effecting for me was that, after watching the film, the reality of the amount of LOVE in my life crackled through my body. While the movie deals with themes of alienation, self-mythology and the value of self-reliance, and while the visual grammar emphasis the enormity and majesty of nature, the most resonant themes of the film are all about the double-edged nature of human relationships. We let down those we love, and are let down by them in turn, we long to trust other people, and when that trust is abused, we build walls....walls that we pray will come down as soon as possible. Why? Because relationships are what give life meaning. And as the Eddie Vedder tunes played over the rolling credits to this painful, joyous, insightful film, I mourned Chris McCandless, and I celebrated the life that I have built, because of the love that I feel for others, and the love that they feel for me.

From a technical aspect, Into the Wild is nearly flawless: the only things I would have lost were the narration from Jena Malone, playing McCandless's sister, and the use of that damn song with the high-pitched male singer that gets used in every single movie (and commercial) about road tripping. In both cases, the choice is just a bit too on the nose: this movie, rendered in beautiful, subtle peformances and lyrical cinematography, doesn't need its themes underlined so blatantly.

Score: 9.4

Eastern Promises

The second film of David Cronenberg's "Viggo Cycle,"* Eastern Promises has the same somber forboding and visceral, intimate blood-letting of its predecessor A History of Violence, but less of that movies thematic resonance. The glimpse of Russian mob life is rich and evocative, Viggo Mortensen is consistently intriguing, but at the end of the day, it feels like not much more than a competently executed genre piece. The classic Cronenbergian sense of bodily alienation seems muted, the attention of the film devoted more to a frankly superficial culture clash. Also, Naomi Watts, one of the best actresses around, is given precious little to do except look pensive and sweat the Morten-dong. Still, the bathhouse scene is truly not to be missed.

Score: 7.8

*"Viggo Cycle" is not the official name for David Cronenberg's most recent films: I made the name up, but it is super cool nonetheless

Wow, this is really going to be one hell of a fall, movie-wise.

Looking at the list of films coming out this fall, it recently dawned on me that we could be looking at one of the best end-of-year film release slates of all time. We've got the directors I love, like the Coens, both Andersons, Baumbach, Cronenberg, as well as guys that are highly regarded, but who generally leave me cold, like Gus Van Sant and Ang Lee. Most of the directors with films coming out this fall are new jack whipersnappers. The '70s "young hollywood" directors mostly don't have anything coming out, except for Brian DePalma (who's got a digital thing about Iraq coming out), and Francis Ford Coppola, who is threatening to inflict more of his late-career horseshit upon the unsuspecting public.

I've been thinking about this particular crop of filmmakers and what their ascencion to prominence in American film says about the medium and the culture at large. The one point that jumps out immediately when pondering these here directors compared to other generations of directors or directors from other parts of the world is the overwhelming, suffocating sense of irony that suffuses their work. The Coens and Wes Anderson are the most obvious offenders on this score, but it's almost impossible to think of a prominent American director from the past twenty years who hasn't blunted the emotional impact of their films with some kind of postmodern wink. It's understandable, and it actually doesn't diminish my enjoyment of many of these films, but it can get old, and it does establish some unnecessary boundaries on the work. That's what makes the Coens film and the P.T. Anderson film the two fall releases I'm most excited about seeing. The Coens are some of the most flagrant abusers of irony in American film history, but I can't hate on them for it because they are such singularly brilliant film stylists. It's going to be really interesting to see how the emotional detachment of the Coens gels with the stark immediacy of Cormac McCarthy. As for P.T. Anderson, his decision to adapt a novel by Upton Sinclair, whose complete lack of irony makes Cormac McCarthy look like Johnathan Lethem, is very intriguing. P.T.A. has always had the most 70s-esque sensibility of the current younger directors: much more willing to express raw emotions without the protective irony layer (well, he's no Darren Aronosfky, but who is?). I'm looking to see how Anderson assimilates Sinclair's bleedingly earnest political agenda with his own heart-on-the-sleeve approach to emotional content.

All I know for sure is that I'm going to watch a hell of a lot of movies in the next four months, and at the end of the year I hope to put together some sort of "state of American cinema"-type post based on my reaction to this bumper crop of potentially-awesome movies.

Fall Movie Antic-Boner Preview:

Films that give me a huge, painful purple thrombo:



No Country for Old Men: Coen Brothers + Cormac McCarthy = The least whimiscal Coen bros. movie since Miller's Crossing.



Darjeeling Limited: The new Wes Anderson movie. It's set in India. What else do you want from me?



There Will Be Blood: P.T. Anderson + Upton Sinclair = Andersonian angst with mustaches and leftist social critique.



Eastern Promises: David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen Part Two: From Russia with Hate.


American Gangster: Ridley Scott doesn't do much for me, but if a villanious Denzel Washington can win an Oscar for an Anton Fuqua film, he's probably going to blow the doors off of this bitch.


Margot at the Wedding: Noah Baumbach is back again with more bougie family dysfunction. You can't beat that.


Gone Baby Gone: Yes, it's directed by Ben Affleck, but it's based on my favorite novel by my favorite crime novelist, Dennis Lehane. If Affleck gives the material the rawness and atmosphere (not to mention agonizingly painful ending) of the book, this will be amazing.


There are some more films that might be good and that I will probably see: Michael Clayton, Sweeney Todd, all those "topical" war films (In the Valley of Elah, Rendition, the Kingdom, Lambs for Lions, etc) not to mention a few promising comedies (mainly the Brothers Solomon), but the list above includes all of the films that I am BURSTING to see, and which will, as a result, probably all disappoint me horribly.

Superbad

I like to think that I have a pretty broad taste in comedy. At least, it seems to me that I find more things funny than most of my friends. My absolute favorite type of comedy is, essentially, the stuff that my friends and I say to each other. Whenever I see a credible representation of young-dudes-making-raunchy-fun-of-each-other comedy, I wet myself with joy, mostly because its so goddamn rare. This preference of mine largely explains my man-love for comedy producer Judd Apatow. His films, like 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up do that kind of comedy better than anyone else. And, with Superbad, Apatow (who only didn't even direct this one) has created the single most recognizable, poignant, and hilarious representation of young male cameraderie I have ever seen on screen.

The only real critique of the film I can muster is that the first twenty or so minutes, in which the two leads, Jonah Hill, fat, loud, sex-obsessed, all to the good, and Michael Cera, a stammering nebbish with impeccible comic timing, stalk the halls of their high school, are several degrees of magnitude funnier than the rest of the movie. The antics of the pair conform to the classic "Let's Get Laid" plot template, and the versimilitude suffers as a result. Still, because of those wacky antics, Superbad could be poised to become this generation's iconic coming-of-age movie. If it does, then this is a very lucky generation of horny young men: me and mine had to make due with the brain-dead antics of the American Pie troupe. You could fit the comedic chops of Chris Klein, Sean William Scott, Tera Reid, Mena Suvari, and that kid from Rookie of the Year inside one of Jonah Hill's ass cheeks.

Also, while watching this film, be on the look out for a scary, steroidal Krumholtz in one scene, and Down Syndrome Colin Meloy in the climactic party sequence.

Score: 9.2

The Bourne Ultimatum

WARNING! THIS HERE REVIEW INCLUDES THAT WHICH THE KIDS REFER TO AS "SPOILERS" DOCTORS HAVE CONFIRMED: IF YOU READ THIS REVIEW WITHOUT HAVING FIRST SEEN THE FILM, YOUR EYES WILL EXPLODE



The presidencies of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush have a lot in common. What with the illegally starting (or expanding) wars, the spying on and demonizing of domestic political opponents, the massive corruption and secrecy endemic to their respective regimes, they could have been long long twins, seperated by time and a hundred or so IQ points. It stands to reason that both administrations saw the flourishing of similar film genres. Much has been made of the renassaince in 70s-style horror films during the Bush years. Similarly, there has been a resurgence in paranoid political thrillers of the Parrallax View/3 Days of the Condor ilk. The best of this new breed (the Manchurian Candidate remake, Syriana), try to mix gripping action with trenchant political insight, and do a fair job. Manchurian delivers the tension, but the finale undermines the subversive politics. Syriana offers the most throughgoing leftist critique of American political structures to get a mainstream release, but lacks genuine thrills. And so it falls to Paul Greengrass to finally strike the perfect balance of relevance and ass-kicking with The Bourne Ultimatum, the best film of the trilogy, and easily the most penetrating.

On the "thriller" tip, Ultimatum delivers like Dominos, with kinetic chase scenes across London train stations, Morroccan rooftops, and New York streets, all filmed with your typical Greengrassian immediacy. The scene at Waterloo station is worth the price of admission. In this way, the third film follows in the tradition of the first two. What makes Ultimatum to a level not reached in the previous entries of the series is its striking use of allegory.

Bourne's quest throughout the trilogy has been to discover his identity: who he was before he became a government assassin, and who made him into one in the first place. The answer to the first question is, David Webb, U.S. Army Captain, formerly of Nixon, MO. The answer to the second question: David Webb, U.S. Army Captain, formerly of Nixon, MO. Bourne's amnesia leaves him alienated from the person he was. He is horrified at the idead that he is a murderer and assumes that some other must be responsible for his fate. The new, memory-erased Bourne can't square his image of himself with that of a cold-blooded killer, in league with ruthless black-bag artists like David Strathairn's CIA chief. Like many Americans who have woken up to find that their country is a torturer, an illegal occupier of foreign lands, and a right-s-trampling surveillence state, Bourne asks the question, "how did I get here?" Like Bourne, many of these same Americans have difficulty accepting their own responsibility for what has happened. Bourne's amnesia doubles for the historical amnesia that has defined American conciousness for generations. When a people have collectively failed to record vast chunks of their national history in order to maintain their sense of themselves as inhabitors of a righteous land, they are confounded and traumatized anew every time the knives come out. How are people who have blocked out the memories of slavery, Indian removal, Japanese internment, the overthrow of elected governments in Guatamala, Iran, Chile, Greece, etc, etc, and a decade-long holocaust in Southeast Asia supposed to make sense of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Haditha? These concerned citizens, previously untroubled in their collective ignorance, are as puzzled by their country as Bourne is by his prior bad acts, and just as eager to find someone else to blame it all on. That makes the ending of Ultimatum that much more effective: when Bourne discovers that he joined the Treadstone assassin program willingly, and, in fact, killed an unarmed and unknown man at point-blank range to prove himself worthy, it obliterates all of Bourne's previous appeals to vengeance and righteousness towards those who "made him" into a killer. Likewise, Americans must answer the challenge that our history represents, and must ask ourselves what forces inside each of us, and inside our collective nature, compell us to savagery.

Score: 9.0

The Simpsons Movie

I've been putting off writing this review for a while because I just can't really put into words the way The Simpsons Movie made me feel. As an animated comedy, it's pretty straight forward: there are solid chuckles throughout, the plot is coherent and lacking the lazy po-mo non sequiters of latter-era Simpsons episodes, and there are reasonably resonant emotional touches. My problem is explaining what seperates the servicable comedy of The Simpsons Movie with the deliriously amazing comedy of mid-90s Simpsons TV show episodes. What it comes down to is that, a week later, I can't remember a single joke from the movie that I laughed at. On the other hand, there are jokes from those Golden Era Simpsons episodes that are written on my brain with lightning. You can't really blame the movie for failing to be transcendently funny. I guess you just have the blame the second law of thermodynamics.

Score: 7.4

A post in which I reappraise a relatively minor film for no apparent reason.

Ever since he dropped the giant, steaming turd known as Lady in the Water into the collective maw of the American moviegoing public, M. Night Shaymalan has been getting curb-stomped by critics everywhere. Not only have they poured Haterade all over his latest film, but they're going back and pointing out the flaws in his previous films that were easier to overlook when they came out and Shaymalan's monumental, delusional egotism wasn't common knowledge.



Instead of doing that, I'm going to publically revise my take on one of Shaymalan's movies, and we can all thank the USA Network for the opportunity.



When talk turns to Shaymalan (and really, when doesn't it around my house?), I usually point out that only really like one of his movies, Signs. When people complain about the stupid plot of that movie, I want to kick them in the nuts. Did they not SEE the Brazilian birthday party scene? or the scene in the cornfield? or the false climax before the real, dumb climax? Anyway, I saw Sixth Sense after I knew about the twist, so I can't judge that one fairly, and I always contended that Unbreakable isn't very good because the ponderous tone doesn't fit the material. Well, the aformentioned USA Network has been showing Unbreakable a lot lately, and while rewatching it I noticed something that is just so brilliantly poignant and suggestive that I can't stop thinking about it. It's more than enough for me to radically upgrade Unbreakable from my previous rating of "failure" to "good, interesting movie."


Re-watching Unbreakable, it finally hit me that the central conceit of the film: an ordinary man slowly realizes that he has superpowers, carries a crushingly sad implication. Bruce Willis's character spent forty-some years of his life with superhuman strength, superhuman healing ability, and superhuman intution, AND HE NEVER NOTICED! That isn't implausible, as some critics of this film have claimed, it's a commentary on the stunted imagination and nonexistent self-esteem of Willis's character. The dude can bench press an unlimited amount of weight, but until Samuel L. Jackson and his own son put the idea in his head, he never even, in his life, attempted to lift more than 250 pounds. Subconsciously, he had placed artificial limits on his own potential, assuming that he would never be able to do anything extraordinary in his life, and subsequently wasting his gifts for years. It's a powerful metaphor for the way mediocre lives are lived.

The Trailer Park: 1-18-08

As much fun as it was to watch Michael Bay redefine his own shittiness as a human being while watching Transformers, the most exciting thing about going to the theater that night was seeing the "1-18-08" trailer beforehand. It was, without a doubt, the best movie trailer I have ever seen. It left me with fifteen inches of rock-hard movie boner for the film in question, even though the trailer doesn't tell you what the hell it's about (and, even after scouring the infotainment superhighway, I still don't even know the title). If I had more interweb acumen, or was less of a lazy shit, I'd link to a youtube clip of said trailer, but instead, I'll try to spin a "word picture" for the benefit of my billions of readers.

The trailer is a hand held digital video, ostensibly taken at a going-away party for a twentysomething hipster in Manhattan. There's about thirty seconds of filmed revelry before the lights start flickering and thunderous blasts shake the building. The camera goes to the roof of the building, where it records flaming projectiles crashing into surrounding buildings, as well as the sound of something huge and terrifying. The partygoers, and the cameraman, eventually spill out onto the street, just in time to see the head of the Statue of Liberty crash in front of them.

Simply put, them shits is cool This trailer is a veritable catalogue of awesomeness: verite camera work, digital video, and apocalyptic calamity recorded from the ground level. Before the trailer even ended, I knew I was going to see this movie...but there was no title given. Unfortunately, this film is being produced by J.J. Abrams, the creator of Lost, who is basically a hybird of X-Files creator Chris Carter and Thirtysomething's Ed Zwick. I've never seen Lost, but from what I gather, it's an impenetrable web of mythology and horse manure slowly spread over dozens of hours of television. Abrams and his cronies are pulling the same sort of enigmatic hint-giving with this movie as they are with their television show. There's apparently a web site that only shows a different still frame from the trailer every day, as well as some ancillary sites which just might provide clues to what the hell the movie is about. I'm worried that it's all some viral marketing campaign for Lost or some new Abrams TV project. If that's not the case, there's a strong chance that the amazing footage in the trailer won't even be in whatever movie this turns out to be. I never played MYST and the puzzle-solving parts of Resident Evil get on my nerves, so I don't think I'll be fliting from website to website trying to find out the "secret" of this movie. I'll probably just wait until the supposed release date, January 18th of next year, and find out. It is interesting to read some of the early speculation about the project, including the theory that this movie is Abram's take on the C'thulu Mythos. That's an intriguing idea, but I don't think going all Godzilla on a national monument is really the Ancient Ones' style.

In any event, there are some web sites featuring cryptic missives that are rumored to be connected to the film, more goddamn viral marketing, if you will, but J.J. Abrams himself has recently stated to ainitcoolnews that the sites have nothing to do with the movie...but he might well be full of shit. Anyway, check it out for yourself: ethanhaas.org is a clearinghouse of goofery. This shit mostly gives me a headache, but it might provide distraction from the dreary lives of some of you drones.

Transformers

There are big, dumb action movies, and then there are Michael Bay action movies. Bay is evil incarnate to most serious cinephiles, as well he should be, but his films are still required viewing for any serious pop culture maven. That's not just because they tend to be blockbusters and become zeitgeist reference points, but because Bay's movies usually reach a pinnacle of delirious, audacious, almost zen stupidity that is absolutely riveting. As I stated in my review of Grindhouse, if I'm going to see some stupid, crazy shit, I want it to be as STUPID and as CRAZY as possible. Most of your generic action film directors, your Dominic Senas, your Antonie Fuquas, your Simon Wests, make big, stupid movies...but usually leave you with a sense of guilt and emptiness, like you wasted your time watching something that stupid and not even being seriously entertained. Michael Bay films usually aren't like that: you leave them shaking your head in wonder, a little giddy from the sheer, vertiginous extravagence on display, insulted by the director's clear lack of respect for your intelligence, but not feeling too much guilt. Bay movies are jaw dropping, and therefore entertaining, even though these "action movies" invariably feature awful action sequences, larded with gratitious slow motion, thunderously overbearing music, and frenetic editing that renders a lot of the action abstract. What makes Bay movies amazing to behold is the shit that Bay is compelled by unknown psychological motivations to include in between (and sometimes during) the joyless action scenes. And what makes Transformers so ass-kickingly fun to watch is that it is THE ur-text of the Michael Bay film. Every crazy, idiosyncratic Bay-ism that inevitable leave a viewer scratching his head is in evdience, and in more concentrated, ludicrious proportions than in any other Michael Bay film. Let's run down some of the hallmarks of the Bay oeuvre and point out how Transformers represents the Platonic ideal of each.

1. Lazy and/or ridiculous plotting. Sure, every Michael Bay movie has a stupid plot (even Pearl Harbor, based on a rather well known historical event, managed to shoe-horn in some stupid-ass shit), but Transformers reaches a height heretofore unknown by man before the opening credits have even started. Optimus Prime, in voiceover, opens the film with the line: "Before time began, there was... the cube. We know not where it comes from, only that it holds the power to create worlds and fill them... with life. That is how our race was born." This isn't just stupid and lazy, this is violently, confrontationally stupid and lazy. It drips with contempt for the audience. From the jump, the filmmakers are saying "Hey, all you pituitary retards who shelled out ten bucks a pop to watch computer generated robots beat each other up, if you're too goddamn stupid to display any taste when it comes to moviegoing, why the fuck should we expend any effort setting up a plausible, interesting or fleshed out rationale for this glorified car commercial? You want to see the big toys go boom, do you really care why they're going to go boom? I didn't think so. This shit with the eternal life cube is good enough for the likes of you." I admired the balls (or apathy) of this gambit, and it sent the message right from the start that this is a movie you should feel free to talk during. It also represents the most egregiously sloppy plot device in the Michael Bay canon.

2. Hysterical, screaming black people. Hey, white suburban teen with disposable income! Don't you remember how hilarious that hysterical, screaming black trolley car driver in The Rock was? How about the hysterical, screaming black hobo at the beginning of Armageddon? Well, if you liked those comical nubians, you'll LOVE Bernie Mac screaming hysterically, Anthony Anderson screaming hysterically, Anthony Anderson's cousin screaming hysterically, and, to top it off, Anthony Anderson's big momma screaming hysterically in Transformers. That's FOUR TIMES the hysterical, screaming black people as the usual Michael Bay movie, and that's not even counting the antics of Autobot Jazz, who speaks in circa-1996 ebonics, breakdances, and generally behaves like a CGI Al Jolson.

3. Product Placing. Obviously, this one isn't really a contest. Every a shot of one of the transformers in car form should have been accompanied by a small print disclaimer at the bottom of the screen: "Some features, like AC, satelliete radio, and turning-into-a-giant-robot, are not standard." I was wrong in the above entry, this isn't a glorified car commerical, it's just a car commerical.

4. Shots of people entering and exiting military vehicles in slow motion, accompanied by bombastic muscial cues. Once again, it's a blowout. I wonder how many hours of footage of Jon Voight stumbling out of a helicopter unjustly ended up on the cutting room floor.

5. Non Sequiter speeches about the importance of fighting for freedom. Sure, that oration by the president in Armageddon is an all-time great moment in mindless jingoism. A meteor was going to destroy earth: what the fuck does that have to do with defending American liberty? I will maintain that the dumb-ass freedom speech in Transformers is still dumber and a purer expression of the Michael Bay mindset. Sure, it's only a few lines long, but those lines are spoken by a GIANT INTERGALACTIC TRANSFORMING ROBOT! Case fucking closed.

So, all in all, Transformers features more concentrated Bay-ness per square foot of film than any other movie in history, and the result leaves you feeling drained, headachy, but absolutely entertained...although the less said about the ungodly bad rose garden scene, the better.


Score: 7.3

Ocean's Thirteen

I used to be kind of ashamed that I liked these movies so much. I mean, they really are flimsy excuses for a bunch of Hollywood assholes to dick around Vegas. But after watching Ocean's Thirteen, I can proudly say: I like this shit. If you don't, go eat a dick.

I'm a big fan of the insanely obtuse, dirt cheap throw-offs that Steven Soderbergh grinds out between Oceans installments (though I haven't seen Bubble yet, The Limey and, especially Full Frontal are underrated gems), but I'm also a big fan of the big, dumb commercial films that fund the artsy stuff. What makes these films so cool is that Soderbergh doesn't commericalize his visual style just because he's directing a summer blockbuster. Ocean's Thirteen looks amazing, with an aggressively oversaturated color pallet that gives the film a 1970s vintage feel. Soderbergh never lets the viewer get too comfortable with camera movements, either. He'll go from a long, slow elegant pan across a casino floor to queasy, Bourne-style hand held stuff to old-school Thomas Crown Affair-esque split screens, all in the service of a steel-trap caper plot that steels a few gags from the first two movies, but throws enough curveballs to keep the proceedings interesting. Another neat feature of these movies is that the people involved, swinging dick, gold-plated movie stars like Clooney and Pitt as well as an Oscar-winning director like Soderbergh have the confidence in their charisma and ability to hold an audience that they're willing to let the film slow to a crawl several times in the service of the sort of subtle but priceless interplay that is totally absent from most summer films. The makers of most other would-be blockbusters are so worried about ENTERTAINING with every frame that they're not willing to risk losing momentum.

Score: 7.8

Knocked Up

This was, hands down, the film I was most looking forward to this summer. It didn't quite live up to expectations, but that would have been almost impossible.

Knocked Up isn't as funny as director and all-around comedy God Judd Apatow's first film, The 40 Year Old Virgin, but it's probably a better film. The dumb-friends-hanging-around moments in KU are fewer, farther between, and less memorable than those in 40YOV (there's nothing like the "you know how I know you're gay?" scene, for example), but the inevitable Apatow stab at relevance is more pointed in this one. The struggles and terrors of dealing with commitment and children are explicated vividly, to an almost squirm-inducing degree. There are a few canned moments of standard issue romantic comedy plotting and emotional beats (the whole idea that the hot young professional woman would keep her one-night-stand baby in the first place), but they're outnumbered by the moments that hit home. Frustratingly, though, Apatow, like pretty much every other successful purveyor of comedy in American film, is unable to successfully meld the comedy in the film, which is mostly the result of slack, improvisational hang-out scenes, with the emotionally truthful plot points and encounters. The plot is just an excuse to produce gags, until it isn't, at which point it gets poignant, but stops being funny. I think the best way to watch this movie will be on the special edition DVD, where all the serrated relationship observations will stand, as well as a good five hours of deleated "stoners insulting each other" footage. It will definitely be the DVD I'll most be looking forward to this fall.

Two miscellaneous points:

1. While Kathrine Heigl is incredibly hot, she is not very good in this movie: her entire performance is pitched at a level of near-hysteria...even before she gets impregnated by goofy furball Seth Rogen.

2. My Paul Rudd mancrush officially knows no bounds. I would literally watch Paul Rudd eat a sandwich and read the newspaper, then take a shit, do a few miles on the treadmill, then watch an episode of Maury Povich. He's fucking hilarious.

Score: 8.0

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Finally, our long national nightmare is over. This Pirates shit is over with.

For now, anyway.

For all the talk about how confusing this movie is, you can follow the plot if you make sure to listen carefully to every gutteral utterance by every tiertiary character in the goddamn thing. The real problem is that all the backstory and mythology that pops up out of nowhere in this, the third movie in the trilogy, is introduced in a string of awkward, leaden expository dialogues that make keeping up a chore that offers no real rewards. Even if you understand the plot, who cares? The stakes of the plot are so hazy (the evil British guy wants to rid the seas of piracy...and that's a bad thing?) that it's impossible to muster any interest. As for the characters, well, if any of the actors asked director Gore Verbinski what their motivation was in a given scene, he probably answered "Fuck if I know, dude." The characters shift allegiences at the drop of a hat and for muddy reasons (Johnny Depp wants to be immortal, Orlando Bloom wants to save his father, Keira Knightley wants to save piracy...until they don't anymore, of course) and you just want to say to the screen: "who gives a shit, blow something up already." And, indeed, when they finally do blow shit up, it's pretty cool.

The weirdest part of the movie is that it is objectively pro-piracy. Keira Knightley gives a big Braveheart speech to all the pirates near the end about how they were fighting for their freedom...persumably their freedom to steal shit from people after shooting them with canons. What with the bad guys being representatives of the East India Company, there's a possible anti-capitalist subtext at play here. The pirates talk alot about their "code" and their "honor," and as anyone who has read his Marx knows, capitalism is the ultimate destroyer of tradition: there is no "code of honor" in a capitalist system, only profit rules. However, there could be a Libertarian gloss to this, as well, since the East India Company wasn't an independent corporation, but rather a franchise of the British government. None of this is intentional, of coures, it's just the inevitable byproduct of making a series of films based on a theme park ride about pirates.

Whether inspired by Emma Goldman or Ayn Rand, At World's End is the film equivilent of doing your taxes: long, aggravating, and confusing, but it leaves you with a sense of accomplishment when you finally finish it.

Score: 6.0


Also, I saw the first full-length trailer for the Transformers live action movie and may I say: goddamn you, Michael Bay, for making me want to see this thing.

28 Weeks Later

He on a Rampage!





28 Days Later is a rarity: a horror film with indie cred. Part of it was the involvement of the Trainspotting creative team of Danny Boyle and Alex Garland, part of it was the grimy digital video, and part of it was just the fact that it was British, and therefore cool. The fact that the movie sustains a sense of nerve-racking suspense from start to finish sure doesn't hurt.



The sequel that was released on May 11, 28 Weeks Later, is just begging for a smackdown. Not only does it fail to feature any of the actors from the original, but neither Boyle or Garland are driving forces behind the camera. In fact, the credits list four screenwriters, and the directore, Spaniard Juan Carlos Fresnadilo, is essentially a hired gun on the project. This all spells shit-burger, but instead, 28 Weeks Later singlehandedly justifies the very idea of the film sequel.

Most Hollywood sequels follow a simple rule: more of the same, but bigger. 28 Weeks Later, on the other hand, is committed to expanding the rage-virus concept that made the first movie such a goddamn tease. Because it was such an "indie" guerrilla affair, 28 Days Later started when most of the people in England were already dead or Rage-ified. It's understandable: they didn't have the budget to shoot hordes of panicked Londoners at Paddington Station getting chomped by zombies. As a result, for all the kick-assery of 28 Days Later, the movie is essentially a tease. A suspenseful, scary, wildly entertaining tease, but a tease nonetheless. This here sequel is the thick, gooey money shot. Screaming crowds getting zombified, army dudes unloading machine guns into hordes of zombies, city blocks get leveled to destroy the infection, and there's a helicopter-zombie scene that outdoes a similiar scene in Grindhouse by several magnitudes of awesomeness. Also, the film is a far more pointed political commentary than the first one was. For all the talk about the "relevence" of Days, there really isn't that much of a political subtext, just a zeitgeist-capturing focus on anxiety related to disease and terrorism. Weeks, though, offers a consistent and well-developed allegory for the Iraq war.

In a stunning abdication of my responsibilities as a critic, I'm going to cite some jag-off from imdb.com for the following analogy: 28 Days Later: Alien::28 Weeks Later:Aliens

Score: 8.7

Spider Man 3

I've not been a huge fan of the Spider Man series. They get a lot of critical notice because they spend more time than any other comic book franchise developing characters. The problem, from my view, is that a lot of that character development comes about through the deployment of cheesy dialogue and mooney, ridiculously broad scenes of emotional catharsis. In this way, Spider Man 3 is pretty much exactly like its predecessors. But, this one is getting hammered by critics. The dialogue is of the same vintage, the relationships have the same semi-hysterical pitch they always have, but what's causing such a backlash is that Spider Man 3 suffers from a wicked case of Villian Creep. Too many goddamn bad guys sharing too little screen time in between the Mary Jane/Peter Parker melodrama. When you're concentrating all of your villianious coolness of a single bad guy, be it a Green Goblin or a Dr. Octopus, that melodrama is forgivable, because it serves a tightly constructed plot. In Spider Man 3, Harry Osborne, Venom and the stupid, goddamn Sandman rub uncomfortably against one another, with Venom criminally underused. I really think that the downfall of the movie is presence of Sandman, also known as Flint Marko, which is one of the porn-iest names in all of comics (and there's a whole lot of competition). Sandman looks cool, but his relationship with Spider Man is non-existent, which is kind of crazy considering the fact that he KILLED UNCLE BEN!* All he does is take vital screen time from Venom, who makes what amounts to a cameo before being dispatched. Get rid of Sandman, significantly shorten the "Bad Spidey" sequence, get that fucking symbiote onto Eddie Brock before the first hour of the movie is over, and maybe you've got something.

Score: 6.5

*also, raped Aunt Jemima

DVD Roundup: Smokin' Aces

I wanted to see this because it contains one of my all-time favorit action film conceits: a bunch of different hitmen trying to kill the same guy at the same time. Much like one of my other all-time favorite films conceits: the zombie apocalypse, it hasn't really been nailed to my satisfaction in any movie yet. Smokin' Aces comes as close as any movie yet has to scratching my "hitman orgy" itch. It's got a relatively interesting and disparate group of killers, it does a pretty good job of ratcheting up the tension as more and more killers converge on the Lake Tahoe penthouse of mob magician Jeremy Piven, and there's some sick-ass gun play, including a sequence with a Barret .50 caliber sniper rifle that convinced me that every single film ever made could be improved by the addition of a Barret .50 caliber sniper rifle blowing people away. What's wrong with the movie isn't that its a mindless gun-fest, it's that the movie tries too hard to be more than a mindless gun-fest. Writer-director Joe Carnahan, who was hailed as a neo-noir auteur of note after his debut film Narc, seems to think that he has to justify the blood and spent shell casings with pathos and plot twists. Movies like this are why we need to resurrect the Grindhouse spirit: since there are technically no more "B" movies that make it to theaters anymore, everybody feels the need to make sure their films reach a minimum standard of "film quality." Too bad the "quality" elements are inevitably clunky and lame and just end up highlighting the movies' general lack of quality. If you cut out that shit and focus on making the gunfights as ludicriously over-the-top as possible (how about the hitmen all start shootiing at each other in the middle of a convention center full of Shriners?--it is Tahoe, after all--), you'll have a movie that is truly memorable and truly kickass instead of a monument to partially-realized awesomeness.

Score: 7.0

DVD Roundup: The Last King of Scotland

The consensus view of this one is: Forest Whitaker is awesome, the rest of the movie is mediocre. I disagree. Forest Whitaker is awesome, and the rest of the movie is infuriating, awful horseshit. The propensity of films about Africa to end up starring white people is a long-time annoyance to me, and this movie is the absolute most egregious case I've ever seen. The reign of Idi Amin is just not compelling on its own merits, it only gains relevance if it is observed by a white protagonist whose character arc is the most important thing happening on the screen at any given moment. It's bad enough that the main character is a white hanger-on, and that the tragedy of Amin's rule is considered less momentous than this white dude's angst, but the white dude in question is a callow dickhead, who never even evolves much. And to top it off, when the white guy is in danger of being killed at the end, a noble, selfless, and utterly one dimensional black character steps forward to trade his life for the white guys' life. "Why are you doing this?" asks the white guy. "I don't know" is all that the black martyr can manage. The real answer is: because the script demands that this asshole live, because his pain is the only pain that matters and his half-assed 'journey' is the only character development that matters.

Score: 5.0