At the beginning of last year, I wrote up a blog post about the career of British actor Michael Sheen, and found a listing for an upcoming thriller called "Unthinkable," where he plays an American-born Muslim terrorist. The cast featured Samuel L Jackson and Carrie-Anne Moss as the leads, and there were several other familiar actors in the mix like Brandon Routh and Stephen Root, so I mentally filed it away as a movie I ought to keep an eye out for. I'd assumed at the time that it would be released later in the year.
So imagine my surprise when it popped up among the new Netflix Instant Watch titles this week. I hadn't heard anything about a theatrical release and I'm pretty good about keeping tabs on those through reviews and theater listings. A little digging revealed that it had been dumped direct-to-DVD back in June, because its original distributor, Senator Entertainment US, folded. The interesting thing is that it attracted a lot of attention over the summer because a copy of "Unthinkable" was leaked and hit the web a few weeks before it had its DVD release, and became something of an online cult hit thanks to Internet piracy. Patrick Goldstein has all the details here.
I watched "Unthinkable" via Netflix, and it's immediately apparent why nobody else picked this up for release. It's a highly provocative movie that tackles the recent debate on extreme interrogation methods. The movie presents a nightmare scenario where Michael Sheen's terrorist character has set up nuclear bombs in three major cities, and Samuel L Jackson is the mysterious interrogator, "H," determined to get the locations out of him by any means necessary. Carrie-Anne Moss, who we don't see enough of these days, plays the FBI Agent who acts as the good cop to Jackson's bad cop and provides the film with its moral center. As time grows short, H's tactics become more extreme, and the audience is left with a simple question: how far is too far in the name of fighting terrorism?
"Unthinkable" is a good thriller, very entertaining and full of interesting moral conundrums that various corners of the Internet have been hotly debating. It has a more balanced approach to its themes and issues than most, which I appreciated. All three of the leads are well cast and a lot of fun to watch. This is easily the best direct-to-video feature I've ever seen, far better than many of last year's films that were released theatrically However, there's a little too much dramatic license and a multiplicity of absurd hairpin plot twists that keep the movie from being any kind of serious prestige pic. The graphic torture scenes are also just gratuitous enough that I couldn't quite suspend my disbelief the whole way through. The thematic content almost certainly scared off other distributors who might have picked up "Unthinkable" after Senator went bust. The version I saw on Netflix is missing the original ending, which is darker and less ambiguous about the outcome of the interrogation.
However, considering how strong the response has been to the film, I'm sure "Unthinkable" would have done decent business if it had found its way to theaters and the benefit of some decent marketing. The political pundits would have had a field day with it, and probably dredged up the whole Iraq War debate again. If it had managed to secure a limited run or even a premium cable premiere, then it might have gotten enough media attention to ping on the radar of its intended audience. As it stands, "Unthinkable" is ineligible for any major film awards and would have been doomed to obscurity if the internet pirates hadn't pounced. Goldstein's column has an interview with one of the film's producers, Cotty Chubb, who was grateful for the good press, but lamented that they don't know how to monetize the film's popularity. Six months later, it's still hard to say if the attention had any positive effect on the sale of "Unthinkable" DVDs and Blu-Rays despite its higher profile.
The "Unthinkable" situation is a good one to pick apart, because with studios still jumpy and film buyers getting more risk-averse, this is a situation we can expect to repeat itself in the future. There are a lot of good films out there that fall through the cracks, and it'll be interesting to see if the Internet is capable of picking up the slack. We know that internet pirates can be a destructive force - see "The Hurt Locker" - or surprisingly benign - see "Wolverine." But can they be a force for good?
We'll see.
--
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
The Holiday Box Office Blues
Hollywood didn't have a great year at the box office. After a series of expensive summer flops, the Christmas season added a few more to the pile. The LA Times wrote up a nice dissection of the dismal performances of "How Do You Know?" "Gulliver's Travels," and "The Tourist" over here. Several possible explanations for the underperformance of some of the most highly budgeted films of the year have been offered, including ineffective advertising, stale ideas, and quality issues. In the case of "Gulliver's Travels," fingers were pointed at 3D fatigue.
I buy some of these arguments more than others, but there was a big one that was left out entirely - the weather. This holiday season was beset by inclement precipitation, including much of the Eastern seaboard getting snowed in and California being drenched. You couldn't turn on a television or radio without hearing mention of the airport chaos on the coasts and retailers getting nervous. The article also didn't examine the performance of two other major studio pictures that have also been taking in only so-so receipts despite massive marketing campaigns: Disney's "TRON Legacy" and FOX's "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader." They're the best indication that box office numbers are down across the board, with attendance levels falling. The smaller prestige releases like "The King's Speech" and "The Black Swan" are doing well comparatively because their audiences are older and have been more stable.
All the other arguments that have been brought up are valid, though I think there ought to be some caveats. A picture's originality, quality and the opinions of movie critics have a lot of impact on art house titles, but not so much with big action spectacles, family films, and comedies. If bad reviews and stale ideas sunk "The Tourist," they should have sunk "Little Fockers," which had even worse reviews and yet has been sitting on top of the box office for the past two weeks. And as I've pointed out before, movie distribution these days is designed to be front-loaded, so quality is totally secondary to the amount of hype that can be drummed up for its opening. Many blockbusters make the bulk of their money before word can get around as to whether it's actually any good. Word of mouth can still give prestige pictures and smaller films with soft openings, like "How to Train Your Dragon" the necessary boost to become blockbusters, but this is no longer how most studio hits are made.
Has movie marketing become less effective? Sure, but only because it seems to be getting more lazy and repetitive. I was perfectly aware of all three of the films spotlighted in the LA Times piece. I was even stuck sitting next to a "How Do You Know?" banner in the airport for three hours when my flight was delayed. But though I knew the premises, lists of stars, and even the directors for these movies, it was all presented in such a generic, familiar fashion that I felt no need to rush out and spend my eight dollars on them. I can't remember any impressive visuals from the trailers or commercials. I can't even remember a single quippy one-liner. All three of these films bungled their basic sales pitches. Sure I still want to see "The Tourist" for Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, and despite the bad reviews I think I'd enjoy it. But I can certainly wait for rental since the marketing didn't show me anything worth going out of my way for. And excuses about the films' quality aren't going to cut it. If marketers could sell "Vampires Suck," and "The Last Airbender," they can sell anything.
Finally, there are the more basic blunders. How on earth did a romantic comedy directed by James L Brooks end up costing over $100 million? Why did it need all of these expensive stars in the same picture? And James L. Brooks? His last film was the utterly wretched "Spanglish" from 2004. How did he get this budget? And then there's "Gulliver's Travels." The concept itself isn't bad, and I like Jack Black an awful lot, but since when was he the obvious choice to star in an effects-heavy kids' fantasy movie? Did anyone notice the tepid numbers for "Nacho Libre" and "Year One"? Did they think he was carrying "Kung Fu Panda" by himself? Or "Tropic Thunder"? Pairing up Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie for "The Tourist" was at least a risk that made sense on paper, considering their combined star wattage, though I have to wonder how long it's been since Depp had such a conventional leading man role. Take it from a veteran Depp fangirl. He's not great at these.
There is an upside to this situation, as this is January, when the pickings for new releases are lean and the holiday titles can linger in theaters for months. It's not uncommon for weaker films to be dumped on screens in late December, where they'll have a better chance to recoup their budgets, especially overseas. The executives interviewed for the LA Times piece kept emphasizing that last bit. "Gulliver's Travels" and "The Tourist" are doing better internationally which should keep the studios in coin - enough to try again.
Best of luck that they do better next year.
---
I buy some of these arguments more than others, but there was a big one that was left out entirely - the weather. This holiday season was beset by inclement precipitation, including much of the Eastern seaboard getting snowed in and California being drenched. You couldn't turn on a television or radio without hearing mention of the airport chaos on the coasts and retailers getting nervous. The article also didn't examine the performance of two other major studio pictures that have also been taking in only so-so receipts despite massive marketing campaigns: Disney's "TRON Legacy" and FOX's "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader." They're the best indication that box office numbers are down across the board, with attendance levels falling. The smaller prestige releases like "The King's Speech" and "The Black Swan" are doing well comparatively because their audiences are older and have been more stable.
All the other arguments that have been brought up are valid, though I think there ought to be some caveats. A picture's originality, quality and the opinions of movie critics have a lot of impact on art house titles, but not so much with big action spectacles, family films, and comedies. If bad reviews and stale ideas sunk "The Tourist," they should have sunk "Little Fockers," which had even worse reviews and yet has been sitting on top of the box office for the past two weeks. And as I've pointed out before, movie distribution these days is designed to be front-loaded, so quality is totally secondary to the amount of hype that can be drummed up for its opening. Many blockbusters make the bulk of their money before word can get around as to whether it's actually any good. Word of mouth can still give prestige pictures and smaller films with soft openings, like "How to Train Your Dragon" the necessary boost to become blockbusters, but this is no longer how most studio hits are made.
Has movie marketing become less effective? Sure, but only because it seems to be getting more lazy and repetitive. I was perfectly aware of all three of the films spotlighted in the LA Times piece. I was even stuck sitting next to a "How Do You Know?" banner in the airport for three hours when my flight was delayed. But though I knew the premises, lists of stars, and even the directors for these movies, it was all presented in such a generic, familiar fashion that I felt no need to rush out and spend my eight dollars on them. I can't remember any impressive visuals from the trailers or commercials. I can't even remember a single quippy one-liner. All three of these films bungled their basic sales pitches. Sure I still want to see "The Tourist" for Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie, and despite the bad reviews I think I'd enjoy it. But I can certainly wait for rental since the marketing didn't show me anything worth going out of my way for. And excuses about the films' quality aren't going to cut it. If marketers could sell "Vampires Suck," and "The Last Airbender," they can sell anything.
Finally, there are the more basic blunders. How on earth did a romantic comedy directed by James L Brooks end up costing over $100 million? Why did it need all of these expensive stars in the same picture? And James L. Brooks? His last film was the utterly wretched "Spanglish" from 2004. How did he get this budget? And then there's "Gulliver's Travels." The concept itself isn't bad, and I like Jack Black an awful lot, but since when was he the obvious choice to star in an effects-heavy kids' fantasy movie? Did anyone notice the tepid numbers for "Nacho Libre" and "Year One"? Did they think he was carrying "Kung Fu Panda" by himself? Or "Tropic Thunder"? Pairing up Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie for "The Tourist" was at least a risk that made sense on paper, considering their combined star wattage, though I have to wonder how long it's been since Depp had such a conventional leading man role. Take it from a veteran Depp fangirl. He's not great at these.
There is an upside to this situation, as this is January, when the pickings for new releases are lean and the holiday titles can linger in theaters for months. It's not uncommon for weaker films to be dumped on screens in late December, where they'll have a better chance to recoup their budgets, especially overseas. The executives interviewed for the LA Times piece kept emphasizing that last bit. "Gulliver's Travels" and "The Tourist" are doing better internationally which should keep the studios in coin - enough to try again.
Best of luck that they do better next year.
---
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Are the Disney Princesses Growing Up?
I finally had a chance to see "Tangled" over the weekend, and it was as charming and sweet and gorgeous as any Disney fairy-tale film ever made. I'm glad it's been doing so well in theaters, so Disney can be prodded into making more animated content in the same vein. There was a minor detail in "Tangled" that caught my attention, though, which felt like a decidedly modern touch. The heroine Rapunzel, Disney's latest princess character, turns eighteen during the story. In fact her birthday is a major plot point.
This is a small thing, but Rapunzel being eighteen makes her two years older than Ariel of "The Little Mermaid," Jasmine from "Aladdin," and Aurora from "Sleeping Beauty." However, she doesn't appear to be any older physically and doesn't act any more mature. There are several other Disney princesses that are older than sixteen. Tiana of "The Princess and the Frog" is stated to be nineteen in official Disney copy, though not in the film itself. Belle of "Beauty and the Beast" was described as a little older and a little wiser than Ariel during the film's initial marketing blitz. And then there's Giselle of "Enchanted," who was transmogrified from animated form to thirty-something Amy Adams in live action. Adams can easily pass for younger, but not that much younger.
Looking back over recent Disney films, the female leads have been pretty eclectic. "Lilo and Stitch" and "Bolt" featured spunky little girls in original, non-fairy-tale stories. "Mulan," "Tarzan," and "Atlantis: the Lost Empire" had heroines in their late teens to early twenties, built for action more than romance. But when you look at the traditional fairy-tale princesses that featured in Disney's lucrative Disney Princess branding, there's a clear divide. Between Jasmine in 1992 and Giselle in 2007, there were no new fairy-tale princesses. The earlier ones often had indeterminate ages, but were a mix of adolescents and young adults. All of the recent princesses to debut since Disney got back into the business of making animated films have been emphatically older - Giselle, Tiana, and now Rapunzel.
A few months ago I wrote a blog post bemoaning the recent practice of studios aging up child characters in films like "Ramona and Beezus" and "How to Train Your Dragon" in the belief that older characters would attract older audiences. I'd be tempted to lump in the newest Disney Princesses in with them, but I think there are different forces at work here. For one thing, Disney has always aged up its female characters, especially when they're romantic heroines. Esmeralda of "Hunchback of Notre Dame" was sixteen in the Victor Hugo novel and a mature woman in the film. The same thing happened to Pocahontas, historically a ten-year-old when she met John Smith. The first Disney princess, Snow White, only appears to be in her early teens, but accounts of the film's production show she was aged up from her original fairy tale incarnation.
I think this is the same impulse, but updated for the twenty-first century. Finding true love and settling down at sixteen used to be socially acceptable, but times have changed and increasingly I think there's resistance to the idea of a teenage girl getting down to the business of love and marriage. Sixteen is traditionally the age that marks entry into adulthood in many cultures around the world, which is why it recurs so often in the classic fairy tales. In the information age, however, it takes a lot longer to be considered a grown-up and responsible adult who is ready for an adult relationship. Of course teenagers still fall in love all the time, but there's a salacious quality to premature couplings these days, helped out in no small part by the current media landscape that encourages us all to rubberneck at the likes of MTV's "Teen Mom."
Disney has always been staunchly conservative and family friendly in the romance department. So while they might have gotten away with implying Ariel got married at sixteen in 1989, twenty years later Rapunzel has to wait a few extra years for her wedding day, even the though the characters and their personal arcs are practically identical. It's not so much a marketing ploy as a reflection of the way the American culture and sensibilities have changed. It should be noted, however, that Disney is still selling the fairy-tale romances, the princess mystique, and the happy endings with all they've got. The princesses may be getting older, but otherwise they aren't gaining much ground.
Oh well. I guess some things never change.
--
This is a small thing, but Rapunzel being eighteen makes her two years older than Ariel of "The Little Mermaid," Jasmine from "Aladdin," and Aurora from "Sleeping Beauty." However, she doesn't appear to be any older physically and doesn't act any more mature. There are several other Disney princesses that are older than sixteen. Tiana of "The Princess and the Frog" is stated to be nineteen in official Disney copy, though not in the film itself. Belle of "Beauty and the Beast" was described as a little older and a little wiser than Ariel during the film's initial marketing blitz. And then there's Giselle of "Enchanted," who was transmogrified from animated form to thirty-something Amy Adams in live action. Adams can easily pass for younger, but not that much younger.
Looking back over recent Disney films, the female leads have been pretty eclectic. "Lilo and Stitch" and "Bolt" featured spunky little girls in original, non-fairy-tale stories. "Mulan," "Tarzan," and "Atlantis: the Lost Empire" had heroines in their late teens to early twenties, built for action more than romance. But when you look at the traditional fairy-tale princesses that featured in Disney's lucrative Disney Princess branding, there's a clear divide. Between Jasmine in 1992 and Giselle in 2007, there were no new fairy-tale princesses. The earlier ones often had indeterminate ages, but were a mix of adolescents and young adults. All of the recent princesses to debut since Disney got back into the business of making animated films have been emphatically older - Giselle, Tiana, and now Rapunzel.
A few months ago I wrote a blog post bemoaning the recent practice of studios aging up child characters in films like "Ramona and Beezus" and "How to Train Your Dragon" in the belief that older characters would attract older audiences. I'd be tempted to lump in the newest Disney Princesses in with them, but I think there are different forces at work here. For one thing, Disney has always aged up its female characters, especially when they're romantic heroines. Esmeralda of "Hunchback of Notre Dame" was sixteen in the Victor Hugo novel and a mature woman in the film. The same thing happened to Pocahontas, historically a ten-year-old when she met John Smith. The first Disney princess, Snow White, only appears to be in her early teens, but accounts of the film's production show she was aged up from her original fairy tale incarnation.
I think this is the same impulse, but updated for the twenty-first century. Finding true love and settling down at sixteen used to be socially acceptable, but times have changed and increasingly I think there's resistance to the idea of a teenage girl getting down to the business of love and marriage. Sixteen is traditionally the age that marks entry into adulthood in many cultures around the world, which is why it recurs so often in the classic fairy tales. In the information age, however, it takes a lot longer to be considered a grown-up and responsible adult who is ready for an adult relationship. Of course teenagers still fall in love all the time, but there's a salacious quality to premature couplings these days, helped out in no small part by the current media landscape that encourages us all to rubberneck at the likes of MTV's "Teen Mom."
Disney has always been staunchly conservative and family friendly in the romance department. So while they might have gotten away with implying Ariel got married at sixteen in 1989, twenty years later Rapunzel has to wait a few extra years for her wedding day, even the though the characters and their personal arcs are practically identical. It's not so much a marketing ploy as a reflection of the way the American culture and sensibilities have changed. It should be noted, however, that Disney is still selling the fairy-tale romances, the princess mystique, and the happy endings with all they've got. The princesses may be getting older, but otherwise they aren't gaining much ground.
Oh well. I guess some things never change.
--
Monday, January 3, 2011
So Bad, It's Really, Really Good!
I'd always scoffed at the idea of movies being so bad they were good. Guilty pleasures I could understand, the movies that appealed to the audiences baser natures in a way that might be blunt, but did their jobs. But how could a movie gain any sort of cachet simply for being terrible? Someone pointed out to me that I had missed the documentary "Best Worst Movie" on the list of 2010 films I hadn't seen yet. It's about the fandom around the inept horror film "Troll 2." I figured that I would get more out of "Best Worst Movie" if I saw "Troll 2" first. The friend who lent me his copy also tossed in Tommy Wiseau's notorious "The Room" for an unholy double feature.
I braced myself for the worst, and boy did I get it. And boy was it fun! "Troll 2" is a work of unintentional hilarity, full of hammy acting, bad special effects, and nonsensical plot points. We follow a boy hero named Joshua (Michael Stephenson) trying to save his oblivious family from being killed and eaten by a pack of local trolls. The twist is that the trolls are vegetarians who have to turn their human victims into plants first before they can consume them. Why they couldn't just eat pre-existing plants is never explained. Instead, we get lots of bad rubber masks, gallons of fake green blood, and a magic grandpa (Robert Ornsby) who might be a ghost. Or he might be alive. Or he might be the kid hallucinating. It's incredibly silly and stuffed to the gills with Grade A cheese.
What sets "Troll 2" apart from other bad horror movies is the extent of the incompetence and the consistency of it. There is some semblance of narrative coherence in the first ten minutes or so, and then we go into a series of increasingly bizarre, illogical encounters with the trolls and their minions. I think my favorite character is a goggle-eyed seductress, Creedence (Deborah Reed) who succeeds in turning one of the minor character into her own personal piece of topiary. Or there's the priceless performance of the father (George Hardy), who delivers his horrendous dialogue with such effort and conviction, all of his scenes are exponentially more hysterical. I can't wait to see "Best Worst Movie" now to see what was going on behind the scenes of this thing.
But while "Troll 2" was fun, nothing could have prepared me for the bad cinema glory of Tommy Wiseau. "The Room" is a fascinating piece of work because the film's components aren't all that bad. Many of the actors show signs of talent and the production values are decent, though probably more suited to a late nineties prime time soap. However, "The Room" was directed, written, and stars Wiseau, who turns out to be a barely competent director, a lamentable writer, and an utterly awful actor. Saddled with a thick accent, weird mannerisms, and a stiff presence, this is a man who would never have been onscreen if he weren't making the movie himself and had complete creative control.
And yet "The Room" is engrossing. Wiseau creates a universe that panders to his ego, where his character, Johnny, is beloved by everyone around him. The only exception, tragically, is his fiancée Lisa (Juliette Danielle), whose affections waver. The world of "The Room" is so skewed in its rules and morality that everyone who Lisa talks to is only worried about the effect of the breakup on Johnny – even her own mother. And then there's the fact that every instance of Johnny hanging out with his male friends requires throwing a football around. And then there are the endless sex scenes and the rambling conversations about Lisa's love life. "The Room" provides a tantalizing glimpse into Wiseau's mind, and it seems to be one seriously screwed-up place. It's hard not to wonder if the film was Wiseau's response to a bad breakup, because he seems to be exorcising personal demons all over the place.
"Troll 2" and "The Room" are exceptional in that their flaws are uniquely bad in a way that makes them inadvertently entertaining. They're classics by accident, which was an inevitable development, I suppose, after years and years of an ever-growing morass of cheaply made bad movies. So I concede the point that, yes, there is such a thing as movies so bad they're good – if by good you mean that they're an awful lot of fun to watch.
I braced myself for the worst, and boy did I get it. And boy was it fun! "Troll 2" is a work of unintentional hilarity, full of hammy acting, bad special effects, and nonsensical plot points. We follow a boy hero named Joshua (Michael Stephenson) trying to save his oblivious family from being killed and eaten by a pack of local trolls. The twist is that the trolls are vegetarians who have to turn their human victims into plants first before they can consume them. Why they couldn't just eat pre-existing plants is never explained. Instead, we get lots of bad rubber masks, gallons of fake green blood, and a magic grandpa (Robert Ornsby) who might be a ghost. Or he might be alive. Or he might be the kid hallucinating. It's incredibly silly and stuffed to the gills with Grade A cheese.
What sets "Troll 2" apart from other bad horror movies is the extent of the incompetence and the consistency of it. There is some semblance of narrative coherence in the first ten minutes or so, and then we go into a series of increasingly bizarre, illogical encounters with the trolls and their minions. I think my favorite character is a goggle-eyed seductress, Creedence (Deborah Reed) who succeeds in turning one of the minor character into her own personal piece of topiary. Or there's the priceless performance of the father (George Hardy), who delivers his horrendous dialogue with such effort and conviction, all of his scenes are exponentially more hysterical. I can't wait to see "Best Worst Movie" now to see what was going on behind the scenes of this thing.
But while "Troll 2" was fun, nothing could have prepared me for the bad cinema glory of Tommy Wiseau. "The Room" is a fascinating piece of work because the film's components aren't all that bad. Many of the actors show signs of talent and the production values are decent, though probably more suited to a late nineties prime time soap. However, "The Room" was directed, written, and stars Wiseau, who turns out to be a barely competent director, a lamentable writer, and an utterly awful actor. Saddled with a thick accent, weird mannerisms, and a stiff presence, this is a man who would never have been onscreen if he weren't making the movie himself and had complete creative control.
And yet "The Room" is engrossing. Wiseau creates a universe that panders to his ego, where his character, Johnny, is beloved by everyone around him. The only exception, tragically, is his fiancée Lisa (Juliette Danielle), whose affections waver. The world of "The Room" is so skewed in its rules and morality that everyone who Lisa talks to is only worried about the effect of the breakup on Johnny – even her own mother. And then there's the fact that every instance of Johnny hanging out with his male friends requires throwing a football around. And then there are the endless sex scenes and the rambling conversations about Lisa's love life. "The Room" provides a tantalizing glimpse into Wiseau's mind, and it seems to be one seriously screwed-up place. It's hard not to wonder if the film was Wiseau's response to a bad breakup, because he seems to be exorcising personal demons all over the place.
"Troll 2" and "The Room" are exceptional in that their flaws are uniquely bad in a way that makes them inadvertently entertaining. They're classics by accident, which was an inevitable development, I suppose, after years and years of an ever-growing morass of cheaply made bad movies. So I concede the point that, yes, there is such a thing as movies so bad they're good – if by good you mean that they're an awful lot of fun to watch.
Sunday, January 2, 2011
My Year End List
By my own count, I've only seen about half the movies necessary for me to feel comfortable about putting out a top ten list of the best films of 2010. So, I decided to write up a list of my ten favorite films I saw for the first time in the year 2010 that weren't made in the year 2010 or 2009. Not the best, but my favorites.
"Late Spring" (1949) - This was my second Ozu film after "Tokyo Story," and the one that left far more impact. Ozu does so much with such seemingly mundane, simple environments and domestic events. He's a master of composition, his films full of static shots that perfectly frame his characters. Here, his subjects are an elderly father and his grown daughter, who have always lived together but now must decide whether it is time to separate. Certain stories are more resonant at a certain age or a certain stage of life, and I found "Late Spring" at exactly the right time, in what turned out to be a year of major personal transitions.
"The Secret Life of Words" (2005) - My favorite viewing experiences are the ones where I have no idea what I'm in for, and discover something unexpected. In this case, it was director Isabel Coixet. Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins play a pair of damaged people who meet by chance in an unlikely setting - an offshore oil drilling platform. This is a film of long silences, where so little seems to happen on the surface, but offhand comments strike deep and simple conversations can be earth-shattering. I thought it was one of the most moving things I saw all year, and its status as a "message" movie didn't hurt it a bit.
"Jackie Brown" (1997) - I appreciated Quentin Tarantino, but didn't love him until this film. His adoration of these actors and this material is palpable, especially the way he places Pam Grier, the queen of blaxploitation cinema, front and center as his star. In Tarantino's subsequent attempts to resurrect and revitalize other film genres, he never quite succeeded in capturing the spirit of those bygone eras the way he does here. I think this has a lot to do with the presence of Grier and Robert Forster and Robert DeNiro, who never act for a second like they're past their prime or were ever absent from our movie screens.
"Memento" (2000) - I'd heard this film dismissed as a parlor trick by some critics, as a movie that is technically brilliant and innovative, but loses a lot of its impact upon subsequent viewings once you figure out the way it works. It's a valid point, but so much of the substance of Christopher Nolan's breakthrough film is the structure of it, the way it engages the audience and forces them to think and puzzle and take the narrative apart. It's like complaining a sudoku puzzle isn't a short story, though "Memento," with its tragic protagonist and melancholy themes, offers far more to chew on in the story department than most other films of its genre.
"City of God" (2002) – Film can transport audiences to places they would never go, and let them look in on lives that they would never have contact with otherwise. They can help to illuminate socials ills, humanizing the forgotten and ignored. The favelas of Brazil were all but invisible to the Western world before "City of God," and it's thanks to the amazing work of Fernando Meirelles and his cast and crew that the film made such an impact and brought so much attention. It's not hard to see why. I saw lots of crime films this year, but nothing like "City of God," a portrait of a community defined, driven, and perhaps doomed by its criminal culture.
"High Noon" (1952) – Arguably the most iconic Western ever made is a fairly simple morality play about an aging, small-town sheriff who must stand alone against overwhelming odds. With movies, however, it's never just about the story but the way it's told. The performances of Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly here are wonderful, the real-time direction by Fred Zinnemann is immaculate, and over fifty years removed from its original context as an anti-McCarthyism piece, the script still works splendidly as a meditation on the virtues of duty and honor. And the theme song is pretty catchy too.
"La Haine" (1995) – I'd only known of Matthieu Kassovitz as an actor before this year. His contributions to cinema as a director however, with only this single film, far outweigh his work onscreen. Growing up young and poor and surrounded by crime is a common subject in many films, but this, along with "City of God" are among my favorites because the frenzied energy and kinetic style of the filmmaking so beautifully capture the lives of its young protagonists. "La Haine" is often compared to "Boyz in the Hood," but the French film is more cynical, with more self-aware characters who are ultimately far more memorable.
"Play it Again, Sam" (1972) – I am a long-time admirer of Woody Allen, and have faithfully followed him through much of his long and bumpy filmmography. It was a happy surprise to discover that a film Allen wrote and starred in, but didn't direct himself, turned out to be one of his best. I think I like "Play it Again," so much because it has such a simple, crowd-pleasing concept that is executed perfectly: a film nut played by Allen imagines Humphrey Bogart's Rick from "Casablanca" giving him romantic advice as he tries to woo a married woman. It all culminates in a spot-on homage to one of the most famous scenes in cinema history.
"Cache" (2005) – Director Michael Haneke has some rather sadistic tendencies that make me nervous, but I have to admire him as a filmmaker. He can not only play tricks on the audience with film and narrative in unique and startling ways, but he uses them to benefit his storytelling. "Cache" is a psychological thriller that takes aim at both the culture of surveillance and the hypocrisies of its privileged characters. And its convoluted mysteries will leave you wondering what you saw – or thought you saw, long after the film is over.
"Funny Girl" (1968) - I'd seen some of Streisand's other films like "What's Up Doc" and "The Way We Were," and found her funny and charming, but I'd never really understood why she was considered such a superstar back in the 70s. And then I saw "Funny Girl," and it all made sense. Barbara Streisand's screen debut as celebrated showgirl Fanny Brice is one for the ages. She sings her heart out, she dances beautifully, her comic timing is perfect, her dramatic scenes are thrilling, and her charisma is undeniable. With a little help from Omar Sharif, she no doubt had audiences everywhere falling in love with her.
"Late Spring" (1949) - This was my second Ozu film after "Tokyo Story," and the one that left far more impact. Ozu does so much with such seemingly mundane, simple environments and domestic events. He's a master of composition, his films full of static shots that perfectly frame his characters. Here, his subjects are an elderly father and his grown daughter, who have always lived together but now must decide whether it is time to separate. Certain stories are more resonant at a certain age or a certain stage of life, and I found "Late Spring" at exactly the right time, in what turned out to be a year of major personal transitions.
"The Secret Life of Words" (2005) - My favorite viewing experiences are the ones where I have no idea what I'm in for, and discover something unexpected. In this case, it was director Isabel Coixet. Sarah Polley and Tim Robbins play a pair of damaged people who meet by chance in an unlikely setting - an offshore oil drilling platform. This is a film of long silences, where so little seems to happen on the surface, but offhand comments strike deep and simple conversations can be earth-shattering. I thought it was one of the most moving things I saw all year, and its status as a "message" movie didn't hurt it a bit.
"Jackie Brown" (1997) - I appreciated Quentin Tarantino, but didn't love him until this film. His adoration of these actors and this material is palpable, especially the way he places Pam Grier, the queen of blaxploitation cinema, front and center as his star. In Tarantino's subsequent attempts to resurrect and revitalize other film genres, he never quite succeeded in capturing the spirit of those bygone eras the way he does here. I think this has a lot to do with the presence of Grier and Robert Forster and Robert DeNiro, who never act for a second like they're past their prime or were ever absent from our movie screens.
"Memento" (2000) - I'd heard this film dismissed as a parlor trick by some critics, as a movie that is technically brilliant and innovative, but loses a lot of its impact upon subsequent viewings once you figure out the way it works. It's a valid point, but so much of the substance of Christopher Nolan's breakthrough film is the structure of it, the way it engages the audience and forces them to think and puzzle and take the narrative apart. It's like complaining a sudoku puzzle isn't a short story, though "Memento," with its tragic protagonist and melancholy themes, offers far more to chew on in the story department than most other films of its genre.
"City of God" (2002) – Film can transport audiences to places they would never go, and let them look in on lives that they would never have contact with otherwise. They can help to illuminate socials ills, humanizing the forgotten and ignored. The favelas of Brazil were all but invisible to the Western world before "City of God," and it's thanks to the amazing work of Fernando Meirelles and his cast and crew that the film made such an impact and brought so much attention. It's not hard to see why. I saw lots of crime films this year, but nothing like "City of God," a portrait of a community defined, driven, and perhaps doomed by its criminal culture.
"High Noon" (1952) – Arguably the most iconic Western ever made is a fairly simple morality play about an aging, small-town sheriff who must stand alone against overwhelming odds. With movies, however, it's never just about the story but the way it's told. The performances of Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly here are wonderful, the real-time direction by Fred Zinnemann is immaculate, and over fifty years removed from its original context as an anti-McCarthyism piece, the script still works splendidly as a meditation on the virtues of duty and honor. And the theme song is pretty catchy too.
"La Haine" (1995) – I'd only known of Matthieu Kassovitz as an actor before this year. His contributions to cinema as a director however, with only this single film, far outweigh his work onscreen. Growing up young and poor and surrounded by crime is a common subject in many films, but this, along with "City of God" are among my favorites because the frenzied energy and kinetic style of the filmmaking so beautifully capture the lives of its young protagonists. "La Haine" is often compared to "Boyz in the Hood," but the French film is more cynical, with more self-aware characters who are ultimately far more memorable.
"Play it Again, Sam" (1972) – I am a long-time admirer of Woody Allen, and have faithfully followed him through much of his long and bumpy filmmography. It was a happy surprise to discover that a film Allen wrote and starred in, but didn't direct himself, turned out to be one of his best. I think I like "Play it Again," so much because it has such a simple, crowd-pleasing concept that is executed perfectly: a film nut played by Allen imagines Humphrey Bogart's Rick from "Casablanca" giving him romantic advice as he tries to woo a married woman. It all culminates in a spot-on homage to one of the most famous scenes in cinema history.
"Cache" (2005) – Director Michael Haneke has some rather sadistic tendencies that make me nervous, but I have to admire him as a filmmaker. He can not only play tricks on the audience with film and narrative in unique and startling ways, but he uses them to benefit his storytelling. "Cache" is a psychological thriller that takes aim at both the culture of surveillance and the hypocrisies of its privileged characters. And its convoluted mysteries will leave you wondering what you saw – or thought you saw, long after the film is over.
"Funny Girl" (1968) - I'd seen some of Streisand's other films like "What's Up Doc" and "The Way We Were," and found her funny and charming, but I'd never really understood why she was considered such a superstar back in the 70s. And then I saw "Funny Girl," and it all made sense. Barbara Streisand's screen debut as celebrated showgirl Fanny Brice is one for the ages. She sings her heart out, she dances beautifully, her comic timing is perfect, her dramatic scenes are thrilling, and her charisma is undeniable. With a little help from Omar Sharif, she no doubt had audiences everywhere falling in love with her.
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Is 2010 Over Already?
I don't write "Best of" lists at the end of the year for whatever year it actually is, because I have limited time and money, and often very limited access to most of the films I think it's necessary to see before making any sort of comprehensive decisions. And because I'm a pretentious movie nut and I take this all way too seriously.
For the curious, here's where I am so far:
Action: From Paris with Love, Iron Man 2, Kick-Ass, Salt, The A-Team, The Expendables, The Karate Kid, The Losers, Unstoppable
Animated: Despicable Me, How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek Forever After, The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, Toy Story 3
Comedies: Date Night, Dinner for Schmucks, Easy A, I Love You Philip Morris, Knight and Day, RED, The Other Guys
Documentaries: Exit Through the Gift Shop, Restrepo
Dramas: Harry Brown, Shutter Island, The Ghost Writer, The Green Zone, The King's Speech, The Social Network, The Town, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Winter's Bone
Fantasy: Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Horror: Daybreakers, Splice, The Crazies
Romantic Comedies: Letters to Juliet, When in Rome
Science Fiction: Inception, Monsters, Predators, Repo Men, The Book of Eli, Tron: Legacy
That's forty-nine movies for the year so far. Not bad. Now the films I still want to see:
127 Hours
A Film Unfinished
Animal Kingdom
Another Year
Barney's Version
Biutiful
Black Swan
Black Venus
Blue Valentine
Buried
Burlesque
Cairo Time
Dogtooth
Fair Game
Four Lions
Get Low
Greenberg
Hereafter
I Am Love
Idiots and Angels
Inside Job
Kings of Pastry
Love and Other Drugs
Made in Dagenham
Miral
Never Let Me Go
Rabbit Hole
Redline
Somewhere
Stone
Tangled
The Borrower Arrietty
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Fighter
The Illusionist
The Kids are All Right
The Tempest
The Tourist
The Way Back
Tiny Furniture
True Grit
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Unthinkable
Waiting for Superman
Forty-four to go. If past years are any indication, the list is going to get longer before it gets any shorter.
I will have a year-end list for y'all in a day or two. None of these films will be on it.
For the curious, here's where I am so far:
Action: From Paris with Love, Iron Man 2, Kick-Ass, Salt, The A-Team, The Expendables, The Karate Kid, The Losers, Unstoppable
Animated: Despicable Me, How to Train Your Dragon, Shrek Forever After, The Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, Toy Story 3
Comedies: Date Night, Dinner for Schmucks, Easy A, I Love You Philip Morris, Knight and Day, RED, The Other Guys
Documentaries: Exit Through the Gift Shop, Restrepo
Dramas: Harry Brown, Shutter Island, The Ghost Writer, The Green Zone, The King's Speech, The Social Network, The Town, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Winter's Bone
Fantasy: Alice in Wonderland, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1, Nanny McPhee and the Big Bang, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Horror: Daybreakers, Splice, The Crazies
Romantic Comedies: Letters to Juliet, When in Rome
Science Fiction: Inception, Monsters, Predators, Repo Men, The Book of Eli, Tron: Legacy
That's forty-nine movies for the year so far. Not bad. Now the films I still want to see:
127 Hours
A Film Unfinished
Animal Kingdom
Another Year
Barney's Version
Biutiful
Black Swan
Black Venus
Blue Valentine
Buried
Burlesque
Cairo Time
Dogtooth
Fair Game
Four Lions
Get Low
Greenberg
Hereafter
I Am Love
Idiots and Angels
Inside Job
Kings of Pastry
Love and Other Drugs
Made in Dagenham
Miral
Never Let Me Go
Rabbit Hole
Redline
Somewhere
Stone
Tangled
The Borrower Arrietty
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Fighter
The Illusionist
The Kids are All Right
The Tempest
The Tourist
The Way Back
Tiny Furniture
True Grit
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Unthinkable
Waiting for Superman
Forty-four to go. If past years are any indication, the list is going to get longer before it gets any shorter.
I will have a year-end list for y'all in a day or two. None of these films will be on it.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
A B+ for "Easy A"
"Easy A" takes place in one of those high school universes where everyone is a walking cliche, from the extraordinarily attractive girl who is supposedly considered plain, to the self-righteous Christian do-gooder with no sense of humor or tact. Rumored sexual prowess can boost the reputation of even the most ungainly adolescent boy, and turn a nonentity like Olive Penderghast (Emma Stone) into a magnet for attention.
The film is presented in flashback by Olive, who confesses to the audience, with the help of some home-made title cards, that her recent elevation to the position of school slut is based on a lie. In order to get out of a camping trip, Olive tells her best friend Rhe (Alyson Michalka) that she has a date with a community college student, which quickly snowballs into the rumor that Olive has lost her virginity. Immediately she becomes the center of attention for her fake indiscretions, and Olive finds that she enjoys the notoriety. She keeps the ruse going even though she attracts the disapproving ire of the school's self-appointed moral enforcer, Marianne Bryant (Amanda Bynes), and alienates Rhe. Then Olive stumbles upon a way to put her scandalous reputation to good use, first to shield her bullied gay friend Brandon (Dan Byrd) by pretending to sleep with him, then offering to do the same for many of the school's other outcasts and rejects.
"Easy A" was marketed as a typical raunchy sex comedy, and it was a nice surprise to discover how little raunch actually figured into a fairly ambitious story. The script is weak and uneven in places, but writer/director Will Gluck takes a huge step forward here from his last film, the dismal "Fired Up." "Easy A" hearkens back to the more earnest John Hughes teen movies of the 80s, which are shamelessly referenced several times. However, the film is firmly a product of the digital age, where gossip is transmitted from cel-phone to social network to instant message at the speed of light, and the entire story is framed by Olive's confessional webcast. A neat little recurring visual motif is the use of a series of shots that race through the halls of the high school at alarming speeds from person to person, in order to convey the rapidness at which a particular tidbit of information is spreading. Also, the characters are self-aware and frequently metatextual, especially Olive taking inspiration from Hester Prynne of "The Scarlet Letter," and acknowledging to the audience that such a gimmick is pretty trite.
This a perfectly tailored debut feature for Emma Stone, who seems to be picking up right where Lindsay Lohan left off with "Mean Girls." Though the story is often ludicrous and the character of Olive is hard to swallow at times, Stone has such a charismatic screen presence that it's easy to forgive the film's weaker conceits. She rattles off the ironic dialogue with immaculate comic timing, and can be provocatively sexy or endearingly frazzled as necessary. Though Olive is very savvy to the common tropes of teen comedies, and snarkily skewers many of them, Stone also ensures that she retains a good deal of adolescent impetuousness and vulnerability. In counterpoint to her vamping act, Olive hits it off with the school mascot, Todd (Penn Badgley), in a series of perfectly sweet, romantic encounters. She may be a smart girl who uses knows how to put up a convincing facade of promiscuity, but turns out to be a normal, awkward teenager in the face of real affection.
It's also fun to see a slew of well-cast names filling out the adult roles, including Thomas Haden Church as Olive's favorite teacher, Mr. Griffith, Lisa Kudrow as his guidance counselor wife, Fred Armisen as a local pastor, and Malcolm McDowell as the dour principal. Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson are among the film's highlights as Olive's quippy and slightly kooky parents. Their approach to parenting is very hands-off, and though they express concern about her new wardrobe and extra-curricular activities, they let Olive resolve the situation on her own terms. Among the younger actors, no one else really stands out. Alyson Michalka and Amanda Bynes' characters both come off as extremely unsympathetic, but this is due in large part to their caricatured roles.
"Easy A" is not a great movie, but it's head and shoulders above just about everything in the high school comedy and romantic comedy genre these days. I look forward to seeing more of Emma Stone in the future and I hope Will Gluck continues on this upward trajectory.
The film is presented in flashback by Olive, who confesses to the audience, with the help of some home-made title cards, that her recent elevation to the position of school slut is based on a lie. In order to get out of a camping trip, Olive tells her best friend Rhe (Alyson Michalka) that she has a date with a community college student, which quickly snowballs into the rumor that Olive has lost her virginity. Immediately she becomes the center of attention for her fake indiscretions, and Olive finds that she enjoys the notoriety. She keeps the ruse going even though she attracts the disapproving ire of the school's self-appointed moral enforcer, Marianne Bryant (Amanda Bynes), and alienates Rhe. Then Olive stumbles upon a way to put her scandalous reputation to good use, first to shield her bullied gay friend Brandon (Dan Byrd) by pretending to sleep with him, then offering to do the same for many of the school's other outcasts and rejects.
"Easy A" was marketed as a typical raunchy sex comedy, and it was a nice surprise to discover how little raunch actually figured into a fairly ambitious story. The script is weak and uneven in places, but writer/director Will Gluck takes a huge step forward here from his last film, the dismal "Fired Up." "Easy A" hearkens back to the more earnest John Hughes teen movies of the 80s, which are shamelessly referenced several times. However, the film is firmly a product of the digital age, where gossip is transmitted from cel-phone to social network to instant message at the speed of light, and the entire story is framed by Olive's confessional webcast. A neat little recurring visual motif is the use of a series of shots that race through the halls of the high school at alarming speeds from person to person, in order to convey the rapidness at which a particular tidbit of information is spreading. Also, the characters are self-aware and frequently metatextual, especially Olive taking inspiration from Hester Prynne of "The Scarlet Letter," and acknowledging to the audience that such a gimmick is pretty trite.
This a perfectly tailored debut feature for Emma Stone, who seems to be picking up right where Lindsay Lohan left off with "Mean Girls." Though the story is often ludicrous and the character of Olive is hard to swallow at times, Stone has such a charismatic screen presence that it's easy to forgive the film's weaker conceits. She rattles off the ironic dialogue with immaculate comic timing, and can be provocatively sexy or endearingly frazzled as necessary. Though Olive is very savvy to the common tropes of teen comedies, and snarkily skewers many of them, Stone also ensures that she retains a good deal of adolescent impetuousness and vulnerability. In counterpoint to her vamping act, Olive hits it off with the school mascot, Todd (Penn Badgley), in a series of perfectly sweet, romantic encounters. She may be a smart girl who uses knows how to put up a convincing facade of promiscuity, but turns out to be a normal, awkward teenager in the face of real affection.
It's also fun to see a slew of well-cast names filling out the adult roles, including Thomas Haden Church as Olive's favorite teacher, Mr. Griffith, Lisa Kudrow as his guidance counselor wife, Fred Armisen as a local pastor, and Malcolm McDowell as the dour principal. Stanley Tucci and Patricia Clarkson are among the film's highlights as Olive's quippy and slightly kooky parents. Their approach to parenting is very hands-off, and though they express concern about her new wardrobe and extra-curricular activities, they let Olive resolve the situation on her own terms. Among the younger actors, no one else really stands out. Alyson Michalka and Amanda Bynes' characters both come off as extremely unsympathetic, but this is due in large part to their caricatured roles.
"Easy A" is not a great movie, but it's head and shoulders above just about everything in the high school comedy and romantic comedy genre these days. I look forward to seeing more of Emma Stone in the future and I hope Will Gluck continues on this upward trajectory.
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