Quote of the Day: Robert Ryan, The Wild Bunch

"Godammit, we're after men! And I wish to hell I was with them."

Summer Movies Orgy Part 2: In Which I Take Back Things I Used to Say and Think About Animation

I think I'm going to make an effort to see Wall-E at some point soon. In the recent past, I've lodged complaints that animation, especially computerized animation that focuses on outlandish objects like cars, robots, dog that are also actors, etc. lack the objective correlative of live action movies. I used to say and think that these movies were aimed at children who reveled in overly cute characters. Sure, I loved Toy Story and Monsters Inc., but I didn't go to see that post apocalyptic thing last year because, well, I didn't.

Pixar's latest, Up, changes all of that. For the first time, Pixar has made a movie that is not really for children. Sure, it will appeal to children. There are cute animals and slapstick humor, but those are only window dressing on a legitimately moving story about a crotchety old widower making escaping an increasingly cynical and depressing world. 

Pixar has always kept a few jokes in their for the adults, and the adage still holds that while the storyboards are for the kiddies, the screenplay is meant to be understood and appreciated by their much more sophisticated elders, and Up is no exception. What makes it better perhaps than those that preceded it, however, is that as much as the action and the humor and the adventure of it feel like Indiana Jones territory, there is just as much reference to films like Citizen Kane and Umberto D. The framework of the story (no spoilers ahead) could be seen in a prestige picture made by the likes of Spielberg. You will cry if you have a soul.  

After half-hearted blockbusters like X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Star Trek, it is refreshing to go to a big summer movie that is genuine and extremely entertaining. I know that people were saying the same things about Wall-E, I just find it difficult to believe that I would feel touched and amazed in the same way by a robot with eyebrows. So here's to Up.

Grade: 93/100

The Vault #15: Strange Days

Looking for a big Hollywood thrill-ride with a medium amount of brains? You've probably got Michael Mann or James Cameron in mind. Look no further than the Cameron-penned Strange Days (1995). It was produced and directed by Cameron's auteur of masculinity wife, Kathryn Bigelow, and offers the same straight to screen ingenuity of flicks like T2 and True Lies.

When I say straight to screen I mean that, like the Terminator series, Strange Days builds a mythology specifically with film in mind. The film's sci fi premise is that human experiences can be recorded from a first person perspective and replayed for another using special equipment that only certain black market type guys have. The experiences exist as single long takes, and range from erotic to horrifying to thrilling. 

Ralph Fiennes plays a disgraced ex cop on New Years Eve, 1999, who now deals in these recordings. An all B-list cast from Sizemore to Dinofrio helps to push this Blade Runner-ish tale along through a mess of L.A. stereotypes, political intrigue, and freaky sex. Fun. 

The Vault #14: Dogville

A founder of Dogme 95, an outspoken ideologue and as talented a filmmaker currently working in mainland Europe, Lars Von Trier has been a lightning rod of critical disagreement for nearly twenty-five years. His films can be disgusting, boring and pessimistic all at once, yet still draw one in. His most recent film, Antichrist, covered earlier in this forum, has just been booed and jeered out of Cannes (I hear there's some genital mutilation). Whatevs.

Several Cannes (es) ago, in 2003, Von Trier wowed the jury with Dogville, a nearly three hour conceptual theater piece with an all-star international cast and a strongly anti-America message. Von Trier fanned the flames by making some rabid statements about a President who didn't talk right and war that was not going so well. "All I can say is that my technique is to go where it hurts somehow" was his only response to accusations of being a communist.

A woman named Grace (Nicole Kidman) arrives in a remote Colorado mining town in the 1930s, when times are tough and people are tougher. Seeking refuge from an unnamed menace, she becomes indebted to the townspeople (Paul Bettany, Philip Baker Hall, Lauren Bacall, Patricia Clarkson, Stellan Skarsgaard, others), who soon take advantage of Grace's situation. Shot all in a barren airplan hangar with the sparsest of sets, the film transplants a mountain village described as beautiful into a thoughtful space of cold echoes and false light. 

Dogville is certainly daring, and certainly about America, but is it anti-American? It plays like a pitch black version of Our Town, and might be a good companion piece to Lee's Do the Right Thing, replete with a stunning third act. I would also have to call it Von Trier's easiest to follow and least inflammatory film. Were he American, we might call this a great work of art, even a prestige picture. From across the pond, however, critics and filmmakers alike saw it as a threat.

Back to Alan Moore

This blog first started in the heady days just following the release of Zack Snyder's Watchmen, an audacious but flawed adaptation of Alan Moore's sprawling graphic novel. Just stumbled upon this interview/puff piece with Moore embedded at The Onion A.V. Club. Is it possible Moore is just a jackass? 

Expressionism: Wha Happund?

Here's a clip from the unmissable Powell and Pressburger film The Red Shoes (1948). This sequence, in which a ballerina is transported mid-performance from the stage to a mystical three dimensional fantasy space, emulated in later American musicals like Singin' In the Rain (1952), is a perfect example of cinematic expressionism. 

However, The Red Shoes is not a musical. At this point in the film, we are seeing the eponymous ballet performed for the first and only time, yet it is not portrayed realistically, with cut away shots of the audience or other characters in the production back stage. We slip full fledged into the action of the ballet, which is clearly presented in a way no ballet could be. There are countless special effects and costume changes that remind us we are in a super-constructed narrative space.

Expressionism is much different in film than it is in more stagnant visual representation. It requires an extremity of setting and performance not seen much since the advent of neorealism and method acting. Why has it left? We find it only now it seems, in animated films, where the audience has already given themselves over completely to caricature and deception. It seems that modern audiences demand to be tricked more effectively, for CGI shots to be impeccably pasted into real life. Movies like Children of Men and Zodiac give us "real" backgrounds that are more false than anything in The Red Shoes, but as much as they convince today's ever skeptical audiences, they succeed. 

So where does this leave us; it's now impossible to make a film which looks and feels fake without someone criticizing it for just that. A campy performance is generally considered a bad one. It makes me cringe to say it, but perhaps the type of acting (or non-acting) encouraged by David Lynch in works like Twin Peaks is the only way to go.

Marty: Doin' Work

Summer Movie Orgy Part I: Terminator Salvation

Let's get this out there right away: I am a big fan of the Terminator franchise, and an even bigger fan of Christian Bale. I have been awaiting Terminator Salvation since July 18th of last year, when I first glimpsed the teaser before The Dark Knight.

Why Terminator movies are awesome: 

1) They are science fiction, e.g. time travel and robots, but not nerd science fiction. There are no clever computer hackers or super weapons. 

2) There are no political allegories. 

3) They take place in the badassss McGuyver arena of action movies. Cameron's influence has been to make Terminator more about action setpieces than existential issues of future, technology blah blah blah. 

4) Unlike many summer action movies, Terminator movies are not cute or funny. They are terrifying and breakneck. They are not Michael Bay movies with mugging Nick Cage style leading men like Nick Cage. 

5) Come with me if you want to live.

Terminator: Salvation lives up to most of the above. Unlike recent fourth films like Live Free or Die Hard and Indiana Jones: Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the latest feature from McG does not feel all that family friendly. If you liked Edward Furlong and long mother son type stuff in T2, this movie may not be for you. Salvation is basically about the war between man and machine: it is not trying to be anything more.

Right from jump, the action is impeccable. I have not seen too many big action movies recently, at least not with the frequency I used to, but I would say the action in this movie is way above par. Most notable are some Children of Men -style long cuts which rove in and out of vehicles during chase scenes and really lend a feeling of actually being in danger. Spielberg used a similar ploy in War of the Worlds, but here we don't have the problem of Dakota Fanning.  If you are looking for awesome action along the lines of the last 45 minutes of T2: Judgment Day, this movie certainly delivers. 

So why am I not telling you this is the best one yet? It seems Salvation was pitched as two different movies: one in which a resurrected ex con has a thrilling adventure Planet of the Apes/Aliens style adventure in an unfamiliar, postapocalyptic landscape; in the other film, Christian Bale growls and shouts stuff under the impression that he's a star, dammit! If you don't know already, the real star of this movie is relative unknown Sam Worthington (who will be in Cameron's upcoming Avatar), who may be "more than meets the eye". The effect of this two movie problem is that the pacing can be a little uneven, sometimes scatterbrained, and we don't feel as much connection to any one character as we did in previous films. Really, a terminator movie without Arnold or John Connor or any of that previous back story might have worked just as well or better. It's still way better than Transformers.

Grade: 86.5/100 if for the action alone. 

Review: The Girlfriend Experience

Soderbergh has two modes: lavish but self aware big star big budget hollywood film, or low fi mumblecore, a genre for which he can be largely held responsible. If you've been keeping up with The Chances, then you know where I stand on the latter.

His latest, The Girlfriend Experience, was shot in 16 days and largely improvised, a lot like Full Frontal. However, this film appears to have a little more direction and its anonymous looking actors (all save adult film star Sasha Grey) contribute to the verite feeling. Grey is a call-girl, but not your average one: she provides the services of a full time soulmate to a dozen or so men in the 212 area code. The camera also simultaneously follows her real boyfriend, a personal trainer who has been roped into a weekend in Vegas with some of his wealthy clients (yeah, the same Vegas from the Oceans movies). 

The Girlfriend Experience is, to put it simply, a marvel. Soderbergh shot and cut it so fast that the newspaper headlines and political discussions in the film are still fresh - that the film's characters are so caught up in money and its acquisition makes it wonderfully topical and fresh. I'm sure rewatching this film in a few years I will not like it as much, but maybe that doesn't matter. Experience posits a whole new kind of filmmaking - fast, dirty and super-reflective. The mirror held up just a few months after the action (McCain vs. Obama plays a large role in the dialogue) scares us much more than those processed ideas coming out of SoCal. 

Of course, Soderbergh did already do something like this: the James Carville vehicle K Street. It was a miserable failure of a show which capture neither the personal lives of its DC lobbyist characters nor the heart of any particular issue area. However, with sex and luxury placed at the center of the piece, we are encouraged to live vicariously just long enough to get the point.

Unicorn: The Magnificent Ambersons

A longer piece on a lost classic and the greatest director of all time:

In May of 1941, Orson Welles released his first film: Citizen Kane. After a long battle with the film's ostensible subject, William Randolph Hearst and RKO studio head George Schaeffer, the film was released to moderate critical acclaim and an Oscar for original screenplay. The boy wonder had arrived, and earned carte blanche to make whatever project he wanted next.

He settled on an adaptation of the second installment in Booth Tarkington's Growth trilogy, The Magnificent Ambersons. Growth is sort of a small town version of Dos Passos' much more famous U.S.A.; the story of industrialization and rapid change from the Civil War to the end of World War One. Unlike Kane, Ambersons is a family drama, a sweeping epic not about the fall of one man, but rather the upheaval experienced by an entire Midwestern city over multiple generations.

The Amberson mansion alone hundreds of thousands of dollars to build. Welles used many of the same actors from the previous film, and almost all of the crew save Greg Toland, legendary cinematographer of Kane (Welles did get all of Toland's assistants however). The film was edited by Robert Wise, who later directed classics like The Sand Pebbles and The Sound of Music. What I wish to convey with all these details is that the production was lavish, epic and above all, highly professional in comparison to the slapdash and maverick methods used in Welles' much better known debut. The film was approximately 2 hours and 20 minutes long when Welles submitted it and went to shoot another film in South America (this film was never completed). Test audiences hated Ambersons virulently*, and Schaefer, who was already under serious fire for Kane, had to cut the film. As much of a tragedy as Ambersons is itself, the loss of nearly 50 minutes of its running time is worse still.

To this day, no DVD exists of The Magnificent Ambersons. Whether this is a matter of legal rights or the fact that no satisfying cut exists, the fact is that it is very hard to find this film anywhere but Turner Classic Movies. I did not get to see it until this week, but when I did, the wait was more than worth it. 

The Magnificent Ambersons is a family epic on par with The Godfather, while at the same time a gothic meditation on the isolation of wealth akin to Sunset Boulevard. The story focuses on Tim Holt (The Treasure of the Sierra Madre), who plays George Amberson Minifer, a snooty young upstart who sees himself above menial work or even a noble profession such as law or medicine. He finds himself infatuated with Lucy Morgan (Anne Baxter from All About Eve), but at odds with her industrialist father Eugene (Welles regular Joseph Cotten), who newfangled "horseless carriages" threaten to bring an end to the old money Amberson way of life. Also, Eugene was once in love with George's father, and now dotes upon the old maid Fannie Amberson, the caretaker of the now decaying mansion. 

Francois Truffaut famously said Welles made two types of films: ones with snowflakes and ones with gunshots. Ambersons is certainly a snowflake movie, but this quote suggests Welles only had two speeds: surely this film reveals a new angle from which to appreciate the man's genius. It is not a complex labyrinth like Kane or Mr. Arkadin; it is not a pureblood noir like The Lady from Shanghai or Touch of Evil. Welles' second film is perhaps his most important because it completes his repertoire. It demonstrates his ability to focus purely on characters and not plot. That the film is beutifully crafted in its look and feel like all the others, along with a witty narration by the man himself makes it all the better. 50 minutes missing or not, The Magnificent Ambersons is an unmissable delight.

*The reported reason was that the film was screened in January and February of 1942, just when WWII was ramping up and national morale was at a decades long low. Whether this is true has never been confirmed. A short, somewhat happy ending has been attached to all existing prints.

The Vault #13: To Die For

Gus Van Sant represents the dream of all American independents: make a few low-budget films of your own choosing which display your own artistic vision and vitality  (Mala Noche, My Own Private Idaho, etc.), then incorporate your trademark themes and concerns into more mainstream films (Good Will Hunting, Milk). And most importantly, once having arrived, still have the time to go back to your roots with the occasional art film or three (Elephant, Gerry, Last Days). Also, you get to defame the name and work of Alfred Hitchcock.

The question becomes: how does a director make the jump? One doesn't go right from narcoleptic street hustlers right to gay rights biopics without a transitional piece, a gritty but poppy script that ensconced Hollywood storytellers are a bit wary of. For Gus Van Sant, that movie was To Die For, a screenplay by academy award winner Buck Henry (The Graduate), about an ambitious to the point of sociopathic local weather girl who orchestrates a criminal plot to get her name in the headlines and advance her mediocre career.

Nicole Kidman gives her first, and perhaps to this day best, riveting performance as the lead, with Matt Dillon in the role of her kind but doomed husband. The acting is what make the film head and shoulders above its genre counterparts, with America also learning the names of Joaquin Pheonix and Casey Affleck for the first time. To Die For is a satire of media coverage, not unlike Mad City, 15 Minutes or EdTV, but it doesn't make the mistake of making journalists or national TV personalities main characters. While this is the story of the perverted effect tabloid journalism could have on an individual's actions, ultimately the drama of such a story lies within the actions and personalities of those acting, not those reacting and reporting on them.

In this way, Van Sant eschews an easy cause for the story's ultimate tragedy, and its all too simple characters' inability to understand what they have done. This quality brings to mind a film like Taxi Driver, in which a disconnected and marginalized person goes to desperate lengths to fulfill their misguided conceptions of success. That To Die For is a female narrative cannot be ignored; Van Sant clearly emphasizes the difference, and while Travis Bickle revels in the violence he brings about, it is the ends, not the means, which Kidman craves. Set in Henry's world of sharp caricatures and mockumentary interludes, the film can sometimes be a little silly, but this does not diminish its effect as much as give it the feel of pop art, with at least a knowing wink in the direction of Andy Warhol if not a full homage. It's also interesting how little this film resembles any other by the director. Van Sant had arrived, but not to pull the same trick twice. 

The Vault #12: Brute Force

The Shawshank Redemption is bullshit.

Having attacked the subjects of urban poverty and union wages in The Naked City and Thieves' Highway, acclaimed social realist Jules Dassin endeavored upon his first allegory, a fable about totalitarianism set in a maximum security prison. Part commentary, part white knuckle gangster thriller, Brute Force marks the best instance of Dassin balancing compelling action against an important message. It would have an effect on American films like White Heat and foreign features like Le Trou. 

Burt Lancaster is down in a hole, y'all. He has to get out of jail, but the facility is on an island ruled over by a malevolent Wagner-loving guard played by Hume Cronyn. Along with his four cell-mates (what was it, this economy?) he plans an elaborate but violent way to get out. Dassin never really blames any of the men in the box for what they did outside of it; one can imagine the film working just as effectively from inside a concentration camp, replete with compassionate doctor.

Cronyn has certainly never been better, and this was one of the roles that catapulted Burt Lancaster to the forefront of leading men. The action is exciting, the themes are unmissable, and the pacing is perfect. So in other words, a Jules Dassin movie. 

The Vault #11: Full Frontal

Think of it as the anti-Ocean's 11. After the Clooney-Pitt love fest, Traffic and Erin Brockovich, Steven Soderbergh returned to his low budget, voyeuristic roots with the mumblecore metafilm Full Frontal. A half dozen Angelinos with varying ties to one very powerful producer mill about West Hollywood for a day, trying to figure out "life" and "stuff" like "love" and "meaning". The varying storylines go from a struggling actor (veteran character mug Nicky Katt) attempting a comedic stage portrayal of Hitler to a lonely masseuse (Mary McCormack) who finds dates on the internet.

This might all sound highly pretentious, and sure, it is. No one will dispute that. Soderbergh creates intrigue by framing the whole digividi melodrama with a pristine celluloid plot implied to be a movie written by one of the real characters and starring two others. Sound complicated? It is, especially since the movie is about actors in Hollywood. Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt lend a hand to give it the "A-list" feel. 

I said above this was the anti-Ocean's because that's  what Soderbergh has called it. Full Frontal is as unflashy as possible. It was shot without makeup or costumes, on real sets, with a downright poor camera in 18 days. A great deal is improvised in the script. Some characters come and go without effect, and very few can be said to be complete sketches. It's a movie scribbled on a cocktail napkin, one which no one involved wished to make with sincerity.

Saying this, Full Frontal is a delightful larf. While the movie deals with depression and suicide and race, it never really takes these topics head on as much as making knowing winks towards the audience that it, the film, understands these topics to be very important. It's an independent art film without having to try, but also a Hollywood film with no budget. Perfect combination, or unnecessary experimentation? Both. 

Couple of Things on Robert Altman

So I just watched The Long Goodbye. This isn't my first Altman movie or anything. One of my favorite movies of all time is The Player, Altman's satiric take on Hollywood genre pieces, which twists between brilliant comedy and cheesy thriller seamlessly, not unlike Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation. On the other hand, one of my least favorite Oscar moments of all time was when stuttering fop Julian Fellowes won best Original Screenplay over Chris and John Nolan's Memento for master schlockfest Gosford Park. 

Park embodies everything essential about Altman - complicated plots largely ignored, inconsiderate and disinterested main characters who are often lazy, tired, or both, and plenty of inaudinble dialogue, swirling about in a storm of "meaning" or lack thereof. Nashville, M*A*S*H*!, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Short Cuts, Prairie Home Companion and California Split are all movies with protagonists short on class and long on wit. While McCabe is a great movie, most of these films lack something.

That something is a reason to care. Most of Altman's movies are just boring, or understatedly silly, or too quiet. People are being killed, loved, and lost, but none of that is emphasized in the soundtrack, in the editing, or in the acting. Altman loves "human behavior", like in Goodbye when Elliot Gould struggles to feed his cat. Feeding a cat is funny and can be touching (cough - Umberto D!), but is it interesting? Especially to open a film. Altman seems to announce that you will not and should not care about the characters he is about to portray. So why watch? 

The Vault #10: Miami Vice

Michael Mann has one interest: men at work. 80s jokes aside, Mann came to the forefront of pop culture with "Miami Vice", not the movie, but the television show, the sun drenched escapades of crockett and tubbs in sexy South Beach. This was not a show about cops as much as men focused on a task, and completing it in the most stylish and engaging way possible, realistic or not. "Vice" prefigured many of the major themes in Mann classics like Manhunter, Heat, The Insider, Collateral, and even Ali. Mann's ceaseless focus is on the execution of a job - obviously the most entertaining jobs to watch on film are vast criminal endeavors.

However, "Miami Vice" was not about drug dealers or thieves, but rather, the men who pursue them, and as part of this pursuit, become them. A movie version of the series would heighten Mann's themes, but also add the meta-layer of performance, of men going so deep undercover they don't know which way is up. Which is exactly what happens in the 2005 film. 

People may scoff at the use of Colin Farrell and Jamie Foxx as serious leading men, but only if one conceives of Mann's project incorrectly. Farrell and Foxx are perfect because there's no way to confuse them with cops or morally motivated agents of any kind. They seem like movie stars, scoffing at the vague hierarchy of the police world. They, and the film, are much more at home behind the wheel of a sportscar or high-speed boat, slicing across an empty horizon, steeling them(and it)selves for the next interaction with the criminal elite. Mann spends a great deal of time in empty spaces, dead silences, and overly thoughtful and imbalanced moments. 

This "naturalism", if that word can possibly be applied to this film, breaks the tempo, and make Vice wholly unlike any cop or action movie with which this it might be confused. The plot is high speed at some points, utterly lost in flashing lights and pulsing Audioslave songs at others. The alienation experienced by Mann's other protagonists is at its height here: Farrell and Foxx barely know who they are, let alone who they are supposed to be. If movies work through archetypes and not symbols, then Mann has created a movie with some of the most complex archetypes ever constructed. Farrell and Foxx barely have to move to be brilliant. Their identities are so confused, their characters so deep (or shallow) every moment is fascinating, and arresting.