Movies I have watched "lately"

So I moved about a week and a half ago. That meant no instant streaming while we set up internet at our new home, plus way less time to watch movies generally. So here is the very small list, which spans probably at least two weeks.

Black Swan
The Knack... and How to Get It
Mean Streets (I'm actually still in the process of watching this one)
Megamind

I also watched significant parts of:
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Darling

I listed those last two separately because, unlike Mean Streets, there is a good chance that I won't finish them. Neither were terrible, but neither were great either and I just don't have the time for them at the moment.

Movies I have watched this week (or so)

Hanna

2010: The Year We Make Contact

Restrepo

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The King's Speech

Valley Girl

Dear Murderer

Smiles of a Summer Night

All of these films ended up being pretty great, but my favorites were probably Hanna, Dear Murderer, and Smiles of a Summer Night.

Movies I have watched this week...

... or, rather, in the last week and a couple of days. Anyway here are the good ones:

Sisters
Tell No One
The Kids Are Alright

Unfortunately, I also watched a few mediocre or downright bad films in the last few days. Here are the mediocre ones:

The Other Guys
Despite not being much of a Will Ferrell fan, this film got decent reviews. I also typically like cop movies, and so I had high hopes. As it turns out, though, I found the movie kind of hit and miss. It wasn't terrible, but I wasn't all the entertained either. There were funny moments, but overall I'd describe this film as boring.

Paul
I had even high hopes for this film because it was made by the same people who did Hot Fuzz and Shawn of the Dead, both which were great. This film also got good reviews. However, Paul seemed filmed with cheap jokes and cardboard characters. It didn't have the charm of the team's earlier work, and seemed to generally convey what must be British stereotypes of the United States. I didn't hate this movie, but as with The Other Guys, I was kind of bored by it.

I also watched one downright bad movie this week. It was:

Revolver
Again, high hopes and dashed expectations. This film is directed by Guy Ritchie, who did Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, which is one of my favorite films. Ritchie also did Snatch, which is pretty decent too. But for some reason Revolver was terrible. It was confusing and pretentious, and lacked the almost palpable setting of Ritchie's earlier films. By the end, I kept checking the timer on the instant streaming thing to see how long was left. So don't bother watching this movie.

Valentine's Day Movie Recommendations

Laura and I watch a lot of films and this week we watched a couple that are perfect for Valentine's Day. The first, Adam was originally a Sundance film that screened in 2009. (It was actually the only movie I've tried to go standby for but didn't make it in.) This last week we finally Netflixed it, and I was substantially more impressed than I had expected to be.

The plot revolves around Adam (Hugh Dancy), a 29 year old New Yorker with Aspergers syndrome, and his romantic relationship with Beth (played by Rose Byrne of Sunshine and 28 Weeks Later fame).

Initially, that premise made me a little skeptical. I originally wanted to see it at Sundance because I was going in a group of people and a love story seemed relatively likely to please everyone. Then, I put it on my Netflix queue mostly because I hadn't been able to see it before and I wanted to know what I had missed. I was also skeptical about another movie about a guy with a mental disorder. After Tropic Thunder's hilarious and pointed critique of that trope, could any movie do mental problems without seeming pandering or trite?

In this case, Adam mostly avoids the problems that Thunder was making fun of. If the film deserves any criticism it'd probably be for trying too hard to be hip (but what Sundance film doesn't have that problem?) Still, it's an affective story with a truly remarkable, if not wholly satisfying, ending. It demonstrates that romantic comedies can be inventive and refreshing and is well worth a watch.

You can watch the trailer here.

My second recommendation is Conversations With Other Women starring Aaron Eckhart and Helena Bonham Carter. The film came out in 2005 and is presented entirely in split screen. Though Laura and I were initially worried that that approach would get tiresome and annoying, we both got used to it quickly. As the film goes on split screen is used to show the different characters' perspectives, or to show how one person might be feeling two ways at once. Some critics were divided on this aspect of the film, and it's definitely an experiment, but I ultimately felt like it succeeded.

The film also displays some fine acting. I'm used to seeing Helena Bonham Carter as a crazy, Tim Burton-character, but this film shows off her feminine and emotional side to great effect.

If you're into film making, Conversations will also be interesting because it was the first film to have the Final Cut Pro logo at the end. They shot the whole thing digitally and edited it mostly on a laptop, which is still pretty unusual (the special features go into more detail on this topic, though I have to admit that by 2005 I thought a lot of filmmakers had made the switch to Final Cut Pro).

Anyway, it's a well acted and entertaining film. It's not a romantic comedy, per se, but it is a romance and it's funny in some parts. More importantly, it's all about how two people give and receive love over the course of many years.

Sandra Bullock: Gradual Feminist or Closeted Misogynist

A few nights ago I had the dubious pleasure of watching Sandra Bullock’s The Proposal, the second of her three films this year. Along with Bullock the film stars Ryan Reynolds and is a fairly formulaic romantic comedy: a man and a woman initially dislike each other, are forced to spend time in one another’s company, finally manage to separate only to discover that they’ve fallen in love. It’s the same story over and over again. However, The Proposal throws a curve ball into the mix: Sandra Bullock plays the role of the older, more powerful professional, while himbo Reynolds is the plucky underling who falls in love as a result of his superiors coercion. In other words, The Proposal reverses the typical romantic comedy gender roles.

Or does it? Though Sandra Bullock, as a vile and reviled publishing boss, is definitely playing against her type she can’t really shake her Sandra Bullock-ishness. The role she’s been given is basically trying to be Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada, but Bullock really just comes off the same way she does in every post-Speed movie. Though this tension between her supposed evilness and her obvious charm actually makes the movie more entertaining, it also begins to undermine the legitimacy of The Proposal’s gender reversal. Much like Miss Congeniality, this latest film casts Bullock in a man’s role but is narratively concerned with removing her feminist veneer to reveal the awkward, tomboyish Bullock archetype. In that sense it’s not unlike several of Barbara Stanwyck’s films that cast the golden era starlet as a spunky working girl who nonetheless ends up in a very traditional relationship.

The process by which Bullock’s feminist veneer is removed further raises questions about the feminist slant of the film. Though the initial gender reversal is laudable (Reynolds, for example, is accused of sleeping his way to professional success much as a woman might be in a less progressive movie) the end of the film basically ends like any romantic comedy with the man proposing to the woman. (This is not a spoiler, as the inevitable end of any romantic comedy is a heterosexual coupling.) It’s trite, but in this case it’s also particularly disappointing because The Proposal had seemingly already done away with that particular convention when it had had Bullock getting down on her knees to proposal to Reynolds earlier in the film.

In any case, The Proposal begins with what could be an interesting premise but slowly unravels everything it has going for it so that by the conclusion it’s just business as usual. Hollywood often takes a lot of flack for supposedly being “liberal” and trying to push a progressive agenda. When some (overly conservative) person watched the film they probably lamented the fact that the film seems to endorse woman’s rights and gender equality. However and unfortunately for those of us who actually believe in those things, the film actually condemns them and advocates the gender disparity status quo that it might have been trying to dispel. In the end, then, The Proposal shows that men are in control and women are just schemers trying to find a husband.

He’s Just Not That Into You: A Fantasy about White, Upper-Class, Urban Professionals

What makes the recent romantic comedy He’s Just Not That Into You so frustrating is that it completely botches what could have been an interesting and entertaining premise.  Unfortunately,  the movie takes all the conventions we might normally see in a rom-com and slathers them with an insipid, faintly bigoted tone. 

Basically, He’s Just Not That Into You tells the story of a bunch of urban professionals and their various pursuits of love.  The assorted relationships are complex and intertwined, but not interesting enough to go into here.  What actually stands out is how unsympathetic all the characters are.  Ginnifer Goodwin’s Gigi, for example, is the axis around which everything else seems to rotate, but she is also a socially retarded stalker.  It’s not remotely funny or endearing (though it tries to be), and by the end of the movie I just wanted something really bad to happen to her.  To some extent or another, that’s how I actually felt about most of the characters: they’re flat, uninteresting stereotypes that aren’t even fun in a mindless romantic-comedy way. 

Still, what makes this particular movie worth mentioning isn’t it’s trite story (which could nevertheless have been interesting), but rather the strangely homogenous world it seems to advocate.  In this world almost everyone is white.   If they aren’t white they’re probably a construction worker, which also means they’re an undocumented immigrant.  Also, everyone is rich and lives in hip, spacious apartments with exposed brick.  (Or, when Ben Affleck breaks up with Jennifer Aniston, he luckily has an expensive yacht to live on).   Similarly, all the character’s work environments are absurdly cool.  Each work place looks like an Ikea ad.  At Drew Barrymore’s job, the men can actually walk around with their shirts unbuttoned to their waists.  (Don’t get me wrong; I think it’d be cool to work in a place like that, I just am skeptical that such places exist and if they do why are they all in this one movie?)       

The main problem with this hyper-cool world is that it leaves a lot of people out while actively marginalizing others.  For example, Luis Guzman’s portrayal of Javier was actually one of the more entertaining performances, but he was only on screen for a few minutes (and wasn’t even credited).  There are a number of African American actors in the film, but they all have minor roles and work for the more successful white characters.  Maybe these casting decisions were made to appeal to some specific audience, but I just kept wondering why the filmmakers didn’t include any non-white actors in their ensemble cast.  The ensemble was big enough to do so, and there are many successful actors who don’t identify as white, so it almost seems like an active decision to cut minorities out of the picture. 

If the portrayal of minorities in He’s Just Not That Into You is problematic, the way it deals with homosexuality is simply offensive.  Like a number of Hollywood productions that have come before, this film seems to think that all gay men are effete, lispy stereotypes that are only good for comic relief.  The entire film I kept waiting to be introduced to a major gay character, or at least someone who was complicated and who didn’t fit a stereotype that was forged in 90s sitcoms and was outdated from the beginning.  Unfortunately what did happen was that like the film’s racial minorities, homosexuals played insignificant parts and served merely as a foil for more important characters.  Thus, in the end, the film’s attempts at diversity only ended up confirming its thesis that rich, white people are the coolest and have all the fun.

He’s Just Not That Into You is, in a round about way, a descendant of Sex and the City, which itself seems to be part of a larger trend to telling stories about cool urbanites and all their hip adventures.  Maybe I should be paying more attention to this genre; I think that urban living is culturally attractive and has the potential to be environmentally ethical.  However, this film disregarded all of the social benefits of urban living in favor of a strange, homogenous fantasy.  If all film might be accused of being fantasy, this film took it to a different level by saying that only white, upper-class, urban professionals get invited to the party. 

Attack of the Killer Allusions!

About a week ago Laura and I saw Monsters versus Aliens.  As fans of vintage sci-fi, the experience was a rewarding one; nearly every scene included some allusion (sometimes subtle, sometimes not) to an old 50s or 60s B movie.  

 

After the movie ended, however, I had to wonder: are allusions, by themselves, entertaining?  The producers of Monsters versus Aliens are betting so, and to some extent I have to agree with them.  The movie opened at number one and has since made well over $300,000,000.  More importantly, like being a part of an inside joke, I enjoyed recognizing the visual references to The Blob and The Thing From Another World, among others.

 

Still, I can’t imagine that re-watching the film would be very rewarding.  Yes I’ve seen Dr. Strangelove.  Yes, I’ve seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind.  And, yes I like those movies.  But why refer back to them?  Are the filmmakers trying to raise any thematic questions by alluding?  What would happen to the story if the reference were cut?  (In the case of Close Encounters, the movie would only lose a strange scene that highlights Stephen Colbert.)  In the end it actually seems like the plethora of references and allusions were included merely for their own sake, as if the filmmakers wanted to show off their vast knowledge of film history.  Of course it’s great that they have that knowledge, but ultimately who cares?   

 

To be fair, Monsters versus Aliens had a likable, if uneven and somewhat choppy, story.  In this sense it was at least as entertaining as other recent entries into the genre of allusion-laden CG films.  Others, like the Shrek franchise, seem to have devolved into banal pop culture pastiches based on the (mistaken) idea that allusions are the only thing a movie needs to be engaging.

 

In the end then, what’s the point of constantly alluding to older, more venerated movies?  Whereas a film like Enchanted seems to be both an homage and a deconstruction of its genre, Monsters versus Aliens and other recent animated movies simply flaunt their cinematic lineage.  In turn, these movies come off as fairly shallow, especially when compared to just about everything made by Pixar.  Finally, then, if CG filmmakers started worrying less about being cheeky and more about conveying a story, they might produce more films that are memorable and genuinely profound.  

Grown-Up Movies

Have you seen The Soloist? I haven’t. And I don’t plan to. And, based on the box office , most of America apparently feels similarly.

I recently read an article on MSNBC.com about how “grown-up movies” are an endangered species. Basically, it argued that kids movies, teen genre movies, raunchy R-rated comedies, etc. were replacing more serious fare like The Soloist. While some of the other films that the article cited were actually good (like State of Play) I was surprised that the author of the article would lament the supremacy of genre movies over something that seemed as piddling as The Soloist.

First, let me say that I’m a fan of “serious” grown-up movies. In recent months I’ve seen Doubt, Nothing But the Truth, Frost/Nixon, The Wrestler, and many others. For the most part these films were profound and entertaining. Second, I generally agree with the article’s main point that more mature films are struggling to compete in the movie marketplace. However, I think the real problem is that a genre of serious films (a genre that apparently includes both The Soloist and State of Play) has emerged and that the defining feature of this genre is medicrity.

So lets look at The Soloist. From the moment its trailers were released the movie seemed like a disaster. It struck me as a cross between Mr. Holland’s Opus, Rain Man, and Stand and Deliever, only if all of those movies had starred Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey. What’s more, every word seemed like a cliché: guy afraid of commitment? Check. Brilliant but troubled artist? Check. Down-on-their-luck characters overcoming great odds? Check. These aren’t necessarily bad ideas by themselves, but they came off as bafflingly superficial.

The Soloist did have some things going for it. Robert Downey Jr., for example, is a capable actor and has had several of popular films recently. Jamie Foxx has also had some success and popularity (though he apparently has no idea how to choose films. Following up Ray with Stealth? Seriously?) On the other hand, this movie seems to show these actors at their worst. I’d rather watch Iron Man any day and wasn’t The Soloist the kind of movie that Robert Downey Jr. actually made fun of in Tropic Thunder? In the end, then, I think its clear that The Soloist wasn’t compelling (its release date suggests the studios also knew that).

The problem then is that if The Soloist is one of the definitive movies of the “grown-up” genre, who is going to want to see anything else from that genre? When I go to the theater (or to get a DVD) and I can either watch The Fast and Furious or Jamie Foxx running out in traffic in some movie that seems really boring, its only obvious that I’m going to choose the former. This problem is compounded by release patterns (serious movies in the fall, critically panned but commercially successful blockbusters in the summer), and the Academy Awards (which shaft movies like Wall-E or The Dark Knight seemingly because they are popular). What happens then is that good “grown-up” movies end up in the company of bad ones and none of them make money. All the while The Fast and the Furious is releasing sequel after sequel and raking in the dough.

Of course, this is a simplistic assessment of the situation. Other things, like the global financial meltdown, have also certainly contributed to Americans’ movie viewing patterns. But grouping serious movies together regardless of quality will only result in the gradual disappearance of serious movies.

Moon (Film Review)

When I had the opportunity to see Duncan Jones’ feature directorial debut Moon at this year’s Sundance Film Festival I was pleasantly surprised.  Though an indie sci-fi flick, it stands apart from both other science fiction films and more general independent fare for its exploration of the human psyche in the near-total isolation of space. 

 

Moon tells the story of Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell), an employee of the mining company Lunar.  As the film opens Sam is nearing the end of a three-year stint to mine helium-3 for energy use back on earth.  Aside from a sentient computer named Gerty (voiced by Kevin Spacey), Sam is both alone and lonely, which loneliness becomes the dominant theme of the film’s first act.  As we see the station littered with Sam’s pastimes and watch him receive a message from his wife it becomes clear that his isolation has taken a toll on him.  Fortunately, his tenure is set to end and Sam anxiously counts down the days until his return to Earth.

 

As the film progresses, however, Sam becomes aware that things are not quite right.  He notices there are contradictions in his memory, for example, and that he can’t account for everything he sees.  In true sci-fi form Gerty also starts to act a little weird.  Though it would spoil the plot to say much more, it’s worth noting acts two and three follow an oddly externalized conflict of internal, psychological issues.  The results pack some entertaining surprises that affectionately play with typical sci-fi themes.

 

While the creativity with which the film addresses these issues is laudable, Moon also makes the unfortunate move of edging toward a heavy-handed diatribe against big corporations.  Of course, sci-fi has been used effectively for such an end before (Silent Running or even Alien are a good examples), but in the case of Moon that theme seems so much less interesting than earlier ideas about coming face-to-face with one’s own isolation.  Thankfully, Rockwell’s performance makes up much of the difference as the film treads more thematically murky waters, though I couldn’t help but wonder if there were just one too many ideas distracting from an otherwise remarkable story. 

 

Like any good sci-fi film, Moon has a fair dose of impressive visuals.  If the images are perhaps less stunning than recent films like Sunshine or The Fountain, they also seem appropriate for a story more concerned with interior landscapes than outer space.  The expansively dark lunarscapes, as well as the austere interior of the mining station, are sufficient for the genre but don’t call attention to themselves as visuals in those earlier films do.  In any case, the imagery is particularly impressive considering the film was made on a limited five million dollar budget. 

 

Ultimately, Moon isn’t a perfect film and audiences shouldn’t expect the same big themes and sense of awe that often characterize sci-fi.  On the other hand Jones’ direction demonstrates an innovative use of sci-fi conventions.  The filmmakers know their cinematic lineage well enough to embrace it while still saying something interesting.  Though Moon may not go down in the history books with predecessors like 2001: A Space Odyssey, it certainly provides a thought-provoking hour and a half.  

Spider Man 4

News of Spider Man 4 has recently been released.  Reading about it I remembered that a few posts ago I wrote about Toy Story 3 and cited the Spider Man franchise as an example of why not to make trilogies.  I don’t think anyone out there would argue that Spider Man 3 was in any way comparable to the first two installments, which leads me to believe that there are two possible reasons that this fourth movie is going to be made. 

 

First, it may simply be a way to rake in more cash.  Even with its negative critical response Spider Man 3 still made money and the studio knows that regardless of quality, a fourth film will probably do the same.  Add to that the fact that director Sam Raimi’s recent film Drag Me To Hell (which I haven’t seen yet but am planning to) was well received but underperforming at the box office, and it may be that cast and crew are hoping to prove their financial viability. 

 

On the other hand, Raimi is a capable director and more often than not his films succeed in telling compelling stories.  If the Spider Man franchise has a two-for-one track record it seems likely that the next one will make up for previous problems.  So, the second reason this film might be moving forward may be a desire to correct the errors of Spider Man 3 and avoid ending the saga on such a sour note.  Lets hope that this is the case; its likely to be a blockbuster in either scenario, but Raimi’s Spider Man universe has so much potential that it’ll be painful to see anything less than a return to full form.  

Suburban Smackdown: Two Images of Domestic American Life?

[Spoiler Alert: I reveal the end of both films I discuss]

This weekend I watched two films: Marley and Me and Revolutionary Road.  While these two films were both entertaining in their own respective ways, they also portrayed two opposing views of American family life.  Marley and Me represents suburban American life as challenging but ultimately rewarding, while Revolutionary Road conveys suburban ennui to its ultimate catastrophic end.  However, while they clearly argue from different positions, they also tell strikingly similar stories that each culminate in the death of the hero. 

 

Between the two films, Revolutionary Road is far and away the better work, though that shouldn’t surprise anyone.  It’s a beautiful, well acted, and insightful film that (though some facetiously referred it as the sequel to Titanic, for obvious reasons) might be considered a follow-up to Mendes’ earlier American Beauty.  It’s so much of a follow-up, in fact, that I kept wondering how its thesis was really different from that of American Beauty, or a number of other earlier films for that matter.  For example, the original Stepford Wives is an interesting and entertaining, if heavy-handed, exploration of similar themes.  The problem with Revolutionary Road, however, is that its only slightly less heavy-handed and comes thirty years later.  So if it’s a great film it also seems to be beating a dead horse.

 

On the opposite side of the spectrum we find Marley and Me.  My expectations for this movie were about as low as they go.  Though Owen Wilson has been in some decent films (think Wes Anderson’s), Jennifer Aniston lives on the bottom of the A-List barrel.  Plus, the film had a dog, which usually means a gimmicky family film that insults the intelligence of families.  Going in thusly prepared, I was pleasantly surprised.  Yes the film was overly sentimental.  Yes it was clearly promoting a problematic ideology.  Yes it had the usual mix of unrealistically beautiful people in unrealistic situations.  But despite these features, it at least attempted to give some complexity to a cliché story.  Like the Wheelers in Revolutionary Road, the Grogans in Marley and Me have their fair share of challenges.  If the film posits a stereotypical happy ending, it at least punctuates that ending with surprisingly convincing acting and slice-of-life detail. 

 

While these two films have a number of superficial similarities, what I found to be most fascinating was the fact they both end with the death of a major character: in Revolutionary Road April Wheeler dies after trying to give herself an abortion, while in Marley and Me the dog, Marley, dies of a twisted stomach.  Thus, while the two films clearly argue different theses, they’re both explorations of (underlying foundational) violence embedded in American middle-class life.  Maybe it was because I had just watched Revolutionary Road, but just after half way through Marley and Me I realized the dog was going to die.  He had to die, because in any decent story about this topic someone has to die.  This plot device, in turn, seems to characterize a difference that these two films epitomize: a negative critique of middle class, suburban life ends in the death of a major player, while a positive critique of the same provides an expiating character.  Neither of the Grogans have to die because Marley, as a savior, did it for them.  Revolutionary Road, on the other hand, doesn’t let its characters off so easily.  It holds them accountable for their actions and when the story concludes everyone pays.

 

I’m not sure why the story about the American dream is told this way.  Perhaps it’s the influence if Christian mythology on American mythology.  Perhaps those two things are too intertwined to be separated.  What always surprises me, however, is what films like these want characters to be held accountable for.  Of course the suburbs are an emotionally and culturally vapid place.  But is that really the worst of it?  Sure, a lot of people in the suburbs are sad and boring, but what about the environmental, political, and economic problems created by this kind of living?  What about the smog and pollution caused by commuting?  What about educational disparity between suburban and urban schools?  What about racial profiling?  What about a whole bunch of issues that are so frequently absent from films like Marley and Me and Revolutionary Road.  Though both films skim the surface of these issues (which surprised me in Marley and Me), they also relegate them to the backseat and instead choose to focus on the tragedy or triumph of the American family.  Thus, they both boil things down to overly simplistic binaries, which binaries don’t even begin to address the actual problems or opportunities inherent in the lifestyle they portray.  

Toy Story 3

I haven’t seen Up yet, but I did just watch the trailer for Toy Story 3.  Obviously, there’s a lot of potential there. The first two films in the Toy Story franchise were truly amazing.  Plus, trilogies are always great.  Things just seem to go nicely when the go in threes. 

 

However, trilogies can often be dangerous, and I hope Pixar Disney doesn’t botch it up.  Seriously, a number of famous franchises would have been better if they had just stopped.  For example, Spider Man 3 was so bad it not only ruined two hours of my life but also caused me to retrospectively doubt my love of Spider Man 2.  Return of the Jedi, while rounding out the Star Wars story, is fairly hollow when held up to The Empire Strikes Back.  And lets not forget the godfather of all botched trilogies, The Godfather Part 3.  Why didn’t Coppola just end it with Part 2?  How did anyone think that following up one of the most highly esteemed films of all time with mediocrity and boredom was a good idea?  How did they think following it up at all was a good idea?  As it is, the whole series is forever remembered by its high points and its low points. 

 

Given Pixar’s record, its unlikely that there will be as wide a disparity between Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3 as there is in the Spider Man or Godfather franchises.  On the other hand, even if Toy Story is only as good as, say, Cars, it will still be a huge let down.  Lets hope that Pixar isn’t just in this one for the money and that the curse of the third sequel doesn’t follow them as it has with so many others.   

The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button

(Spoiler Alert)

Everything I heard about this film made me not want to see it.  That includes the general boredom that everyone I knew expressed with it, the reviews from well-know critics, and even its own promotional material.  The plus side of all that negative press, however, was that when I finally rented the film a couple of nights ago my expectations were really low and it almost couldn’t help but meet them.  So, all in all, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was a pleasing grand romance that would have benefited from being half as long and some drastic streamlining of the story. 

 

One of the most common criticisms leveled at Benjamin Button was that it was just like Forrest Gump, but not quite as good.  After having watched the film this criticism surprises me.  Sure there are people working on boats, going to war, etc., in both films.  But for the most part this comparison is mostly superficial.  Even if the films use similar methods, the end result is wholly different.  If Forrest Gump is a kind of extended buildungsroman with an ambiguous but uplifting ending, Benjamin Button is a tragic romance.  If the more recent film’s execution is less successful, that romantic element is at least vastly more appealing (to me) than Forrest Gump’s feel-good catalogue of twentieth century events. 

 

The reason that Benjamin Button is less entertaining than Forrest Gump (or a lot of films, for that matter) is because it seems to have lost its focus from the first scene.  It starts out with an elderly Daisy (played by Cate Blanchett) telling her daughter the story of Benjamin Button’s life through the journal he left behind.  Eventually we learn that the daughter’s father is actually Benjamin Button himself, but this does little to endear her to the audience.  She, like so many of the characters, seems to be included merely for expository purposes and, while the filmmakers would have had to be more creative in setting up the story, the film would have benefited from removing her.  This pattern gets repeated throughout the film.  Every time Benjamin Button and Daisy get together, or almost get together, the story soars.  Unfortunately they’re off doing other, irrelevant things for a lot of the film.  Benjamin’s romance with Elizabeth (played by Tilda Swinton), is good because it sets the stage for his later encounters with Daisy, but nearly everything that led up to that romance was extraneous.  So he’s from New Orleans, went to war, etc., etc.  The audience didn’t need such extensive background on Benjamin, nor most of what happens later.  In the end all that stuff could have been boiled down to a few minutes and while still producing similar—or rather, better—results. 

 

Unlike some films, this one doesn’t need all the filler.  It’s over two and half hours long. If it had been cut down by an hour it would have been more poignant and the admirable performances by most of the cast wouldn’t have lost.  Instead, I kept thinking the whole time how I really liked the idea of the story, but was wasting my time watching the whole movie.  Ultimately, that idea was powerful enough to keep me entertained, while wishing at the same time that it had been rendered more affectively.  

Faster, Furiouser

Last night Laura and I went with our friend Tony to see the newest installment of The Fast and the Furious.  If I was reviewing this movie for a newspaper or similar publication I would give it one star (take your pick out of how many) simply out of pity for the cadre of earnest B actors whose careers must not have panned out as planned and thusly reunited for this exercise in boredom.  However, that’s not what I’m doing.  Instead, I’d like to comment on the film as an exercise in postmodernism, as such, it is moderately successful but still disappointing.  (I’d give it maybe two stars out of four or five when looking at it this way.)

 

I’m not going to bother defining postmodernism here, but basically postmodern films may tend to be self-conscious/self-reflexive, have non-conventional story telling (non-linear for example), be filled with allusions, have affectionate critiques of pop culture, and/or countless other elements.  That’s not comprehensive and people will certainly disagree, but films like Go, pretty much everything by Quentin Tarantino, or even the Shrek movies might arguably fall into this category.

 

The Fast and the Furious series generally deserves to be classified in this category, I think, because it is just so over the top.  Everyone in the films is stronger, more agile, more beautiful, and more sexualized than could ever happen in real life.  A perfect example of this is the beginning of The Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift.  Though all the characters are ostensibly in high school, they all must actually be twenty-somethings who spend all day at the gym.  In the case of the women, they also must avoid anything resembling food.  Compound that with ridiculous violence, impossible car chases, and the blatant emphasis on the objectification of the human body, and the film becomes a delicious entry into and commentary on the genre of car chase/heist/underdog movie.  The rest of the film gets bogged down with futile attempts at plot and character development, but the beginning scenes (ten to fifteen minutes or so) are worth watching.

 

This isn’t to say I endorse the values presented on screen in Tokyo Drift, but rather to say that the film is so over the top that it can’t help but be ironic.  It ups the ante so far that it seems to be asking if upping the ante is really such a good thing in the first place.  This ironic commentary certainly goes over the heads of the teenage boys who are the film’s target audience, but it at least allows the film to entertaining to people outside that demographic and to stimulate a conversation about appropriate representation contemporary society.

 

This irony is what the newest Fast and the Furious is missing.  The movie starts out with the old gang trying to rob a fuel truck in Latin America.  The scene is appropriate for the genre, but very much by-the-numbers.  People do incredible, impossible things, but never with relish or zest or in a way that seems remotely new.  Subsequently, the scene seems to set the tone for the rest of the film.  Everyone goes about the business of stealing and killing and having sex and whatever, but there’s no joy in any of it.

 

Part of the problem seems to be that the film is downright confusing.  Not that plot matters in this sort of movie, but everyone kept referring to everyone else as “my brother” or “the ex-girlfriend.”  I couldn’t remember a single thing about the earlier films, because lets face it, they’re not very memorable (with the exception of Tokyo Drift’s beginning), so I couldn’t tell who was doing what.  Thus, it took me about half the movie to work out a mental framework of what the relationships were and until then the action was relatively meaningless.  Perhaps the filmmakers could have had the characters just introduce themselves to the camera at the beginning, or have shown some sort of family tree-like image that explained it all.  Then I could have happily forgotten the details but still have known who to root for in the car chases.  As it was, I kept asking myself if I should want Vin Disel or the other guy to win. 

 

The other problem with the movie was that the action itself seemed so ordinary.  For example, the car chases through underground tunnels on the US-Mexican border were insufferably long.  I’m sure they seemed awesome in the script, but on film they just seemed like someone’s home video of the Indian Jones ride at Disneyland.  All I wanted was for it to end and get back to something at least marginally interesting.

 

In the end, the film had many of the hallmarks of a postmodern action flick and for those reasons might be worth taking a look if you’re really into that.  On the other hand, those hallmarks were presented without much affection or joy.  I’m not saying every movie has to be as relentlessly self-conscious as Tarantino’s stuff, nor that it needs to be comedic like, say, Hot Fuzz.  It would just help if the filmmakers understood the irony of what they’re doing.  When Vin Disel is asked by a thuggish adversary if he’s “taking to the boss,” let him be a smart aleck once in a while instead of just looking like he’s confused.  If there’s going to be tons of hot women (“hot women” is how they are credited in the end titles) making out with each other, consider what that might mean and how it might be ironic.  Ultimately, doing any of these things would make the movie far more engaging, and a lot more fun.  Maybe next time they can make The Faster and the Furiouser and start getting some of these things right.