Overlooked Movie Monday: Near Dark
Overlooked Movie Monday: The Believer
Top Ten Craziest Mel Gibson Movie Moments
“The Fourth Kind” is the worst kind
“A Christmas Carol” is a cold FX exercise
There’s a lot of talk these days about the threat of climate change/global warming/global climate destabilization, and I think most of it misses the point. For the purposes of this argument, I’m going to ignore the controversy in the scientific community over whether or not global warming even exists (just like the massive controversy over evolution) and just assume that it does (despite the powerful and compelling words of non-scientists like Danish author Bjorn Lomborg and businessman/inventor Christopher Monckton).
Okay, so now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let me ask a very simple question: What’s so bad about global warming? Aside from its complete falseness (last time; I promise), what precisely is the problem? Oh, boo-fucking-hoo, the ice caps are melting. Really? That’s the best you’ve got? Ecosystems collapsing? Species dying out? Natural resources disappearing? First of all, I don’t even know what the fuck an “ecosystem” is, much less what its collapse might entail. Secondly, I’m supposed to give a shit about the extinction of polar bears? Have you ever SEEN a polar bear? I hate to break it to you, young liberals, but they’re not the fluffy, Coke-drinking, cordial beasts you’ve been led to believe they are by the liberal media. Quite the contrary, polar bears EAT PEOPLE. That’s right! Despite what those commie faggots plastered across your TV screens want you to think, polar bears are not your friends and cuddling them will only lead to you being eaten alive. Who do you think they want cuddling polar bears, anyway? Well, let’s think for a second…where in the United States will you find polar bears? The gay-friendly northeast? Nope. How about the den of sin that is the West Coast? Try again. Wait…what was that? Alaska? We have a winner! Ever since Sarah Palin came around and started speaking the fucking truth, these Godless tubthumpers have had it out for her wintry wonderland of a home state. Typical.
Ah! I seem to have digressed. Forgive me; I get so worked up over communism and the sex lives of consenting adults that I tend to get off track when discussing anything else. Where was I? Oh yeah! “Global warming” (put in quotes to accentuate its highly debated status of existence). Here’s the bottom line: environmentalists hate people. They love zebras and monkeys and dolphins and shit, but they hate God’s favorite creations. So, with that in mind, let’s consider the motivations behind wanting to stop something as benign as the planet turning up the heat a tad. Environmentalists, as I was saying, hate people. Global warming melts things. What kinds of things? Oh, I don’t know, maybe…ICEBERGS?! Yeah, I said it. You remember what took out the Titanic – that glorious vessel of human invention? It wasn’t fucking “global warming.” It was an iceberg. Global warming melts icebergs. And environmentalists want to reverse global warming. Why? To create more icebergs to eviscerate more sea vessels to kill more people. Didn’t think we’d catch on, did you, you slimy bastards? But we did. How fucking insensitive you people are to the lives lost that day. Tans are awesome. Water sports rule. No more icebergs for giant ships to crash into is optimal. You don’t care, though. You’re just as bad as the people that hate the victims of 9/11 by not supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (liberals love dark-skinned foreigners almost as much as zebras).
In conclusion: socialism, gays, abortion, atheists, and Muslims. Vote republican.
Since it’s a little late to write a standard review, I’ll keep things brief and unilaterally focused. I’m not going to tell you about the director and list his cinematic pedigree, nor will I needlessly discuss the book on which the film is based and yammer on about its beloved author’s eccentricity. I think we can all do without the paint-by-numbers review jargon.
So, getting to the point, it should be noted that the film is really quite beautiful. Spike Jonze’s categorically “indie”-style camerawork (hand held, somewhat gritty) conjoined with the big budget, technically superb visual effects serve the storytelling extremely well; I can imagine a Spielberg or a Burton giving the film an unnecessarily epic scope which might undercut the authenticity and sincerity of the early scenes and thus undercut the quiet tenderness of the later ones.
I think the film works as amazingly well as it does because of its utter simplicity (which rings unbelievably true). Max is the victim of a broken home, yes, but that goes completely unexploited. It’s just a fact of his life. A look in his eyes tells us everything we need to know about how much he misses his father and that’s as far as Jonze takes it. His additional family problems are not particularly devastating, either, nor are they particularly uncommon. However, they are put in such a realistic context and given such nuance that they come across as achingly universal, not boringly commonplace.
Where the wild things actually are is not an especially magical place; it doesn’t hold a candle to Oz or Wonderland or even some of Dr. Seuss’ worlds, for example. But that’s irrelevant. This is a big budget children’s film grounded in honest human emotion and it’s one of those rare cases where the visual effects really do serve the story in their entirety. The more and more it sets in, the fonder I am of the experience. This is a subtle, (emotionally) realistic, deeply moving little film.
“I know what you’re thinking: ‘Great. Here’s another list of terrible comedies for idiot potheads to watch as they stuff their faces with commercial snack products and contribute nothing to the world.’ That’s exactly what you’re thinking. I know it is. And you’re wrong. I’ve smoked a decent amount of pot in my life, and I tend to view it as something more meaningful than most of the casual and even committed smokers I know. I think if the only thing you get out of it is the giggles and the munchies, you’re really missing out. Smoke a bowl and take a hike in the woods. Cook. Draw something. Or just watch one of these movies…”
What was I expecting, here? I don’t know. I didn’t necessarily anticipate good taste or stunning craftsmanship, but I definitely didn’t anticipate this. Truth be told, I’m just angry. I was angry at this movie immediately. I almost want to forgo writing a review and send the director a list of my grievances instead. I’m not scared; I’m resentful.
Isn’t Zombie supposed to be a massive horror movie buff? Shouldn’t he be clued in slightly to what works and what doesn’t? I just wanna grab him and scream, “Stop trying to humanize your villain! Please! It completely works against you and serves no useful purpose!” Showing Michael as a small child with deep affection for his mother doesn’t make him scarier. Anton Chigurh (”No Country for Old Men”) and Heath Ledger’s Joker were a thousand times more menacing than this limp juggernaut could ever be, and that’s because the Coen Brothers and Christopher Nolan had the good sense to avoid giving those characters lame expository passages to explain their behaviors. Every murder in this movie hits precisely the wrong note. Michael Myers is not seen as a malevolent force; he’s seen as an oaf with bizarre hallucinations who obeys his wraith-like mother’s every command. When I see a human being murdering another human being, it doesn’t scare me. It just upsets me. It’s ugly and depressing. And honestly, even if this hacky, borderline-Oedipal character treatment had been done well, it still would’ve been counterproductive. But, for the record, it wasn’t. It was cheesy and embarrassing.
What else? Oh yeah. Nausea and fear are not interchangeable conditions. Carefully showing me a person’s stab wounds, again, does not scare me. It grosses me out. It makes me queasy. Never, ever confuse this with the kind of sensation experienced when watching a horror movie made with prowess and integrity (like, for instance, the original “Halloween”). He might as well be showing us feces.
Also, I’ve had it with the parade of grotesqueness. Another major self-defeating portion of this movie is attributable to Zombie’s penchant for giving us awful, insufferable, disgusting, scummy characters who exist merely so they can cease to do so moments later. This renders every killing totally inconsequential. Why should I care when Myers decapitates an ambulance driver who’s spent all his screen time happily discussing necrophilia? Why should I care when Myers bludgeons two men to death who’ve both just assaulted him for trespassing? Even the color palette is completely inappropriate. The grungy look accentuates the wretchedness of these characters and augments the audience’s disinterest in their deaths. If the victims are cruel and arguably deserving and even the undeserving ones inhabit a dreary, unrealistic world, how can I conjure up any level of sympathy for them? How can I have a stake in their survival?
This is basic stuff, Zombie. Seriously, what the hell are you doing? Haven’t you made a few movies already? Have you learned nothing from them? Even if this were your first film, it’s not like you didn’t have an impeccable frame of reference. You’re remaking good movies and changing everything about them that made them so.
I felt a lot of things while I was watching “Halloween II”: depression, annoyance, discomfort. Mostly, it made me want to shower. This is an ugly, clumsy, surprisingly awful film. Like I said, I didn’t expect high art. But I definitely didn’t expect to hate it. And I really hated it. So did my fellow audience members. They, too, were disinterested. They didn’t scream. They didn’t gasp. They laughed when they weren’t supposed to. As a matter of fact, laughter was their only audible response. Let’s just say a prayer for Malcolm McDowell and move on with our lives.
I’ve never been a Tarantino fan. “Pulp Fiction” was indisputably entertaining and well-made, but its universally-accepted greatness is something that eludes me to this day. I enjoyed the “Kill Bill” movies, too, in about the same way, only they were easier to accept as they clearly strove for style exclusively. “Inglourious Basterds,” on the other hand, is a film whose greatness I’ve no problem admitting.
In Tarantino’s work, there’s something that appeals to our most fundamental inclinations. Slick, quirky dialogue coupled with intense violence pervades all of what he’s done and that strikes a very basic chord. His movies are, for lack of a better word, “badass.” And this one is no exception; that it’s about WW2 makes it all the more perplexing. Set in Nazi-occupied France during WW2, the film opens with Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) interrogating a French dairy farmer about hiding Jews on his property. They talk and talk and talk. They exchange knowing glares. It’s tense and sinister and its closure is truly horrific. But the very next scene is of Brad Pitt’s Lt. Aldo Raine giving his speech to The Basterds (a group of Jewish-American soldiers) about “killin’ Nazis.” He has a thick Southern accent whose accuracy is comparable to Pacino’s in “Scarface” and he gleefully orders his men to retrieve 100 “Nazi scalps” each. He’s having fun. And therein lies what could’ve been the problem. It’s completely tonally inconsistent. It really shouldn’t work. The whole movie shouldn’t work. Scenes range from tense and horrific to hilarious and absurd to brutally violent, and as I was watching it unfold, I kept thinking, “This isn’t going to work. This can’t work. There’s no way Tarantino can make this work.” But it did work! I don’t know how it did, but it did. And that fact alone makes it an astonishing achievement.
Now, I know I just admitted to not knowing how it worked, but I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t at least try my best to postulate a reason. Perhaps the unforgiving, ruthlessly unsympathetic depiction of the Nazis provides a stark contrast to the depiction of The Basterds, lending credence to their absurdity. I mean, were the Nazis themselves not absurd? Is antisemitism, homophobia, racism, xenophobia, and a willingness to massacre millions of people not absurd? I don’t know if there’s anything that could be more absurd. The Basterds mirror this absurdity, with diametrically-opposing motivations and a sense of self, again, seemingly inconsistent. I guess what I’m trying to say is maybe the Nazis (certainly in the universe of this film, whose history has been cleverly rewritten to its advantage), through their crimes, made a film like this necessary. And not only necessary, but meaningful. I’ve never applauded war crimes before.
Having read all of that, you might forget we’re talking about a movie, which is a shame because, as a movie, this thing is bursting at the seams. There’s so much going on. There are two pseudo-documentary segments narrated by Samuel L. Jackson which remind you, advantageously, that you’re watching a movie. The performances are uniformly excellent, and I’m positive I don’t need to focus on Christoph Waltz for very long at all. There’s Oscar-talk and it’s deserved; that’s all I’ll say. The film also isn’t as violent as you might anticipate. In fact, aside from the shootings throughout, I can only recall a few instances of graphic violence. That being said, the violence shown is truly graphic. It’s an interesting, wholly effective strategy of Tarantino’s to use violence only when necessary to the story and only in the most revealing, honest way possible. The film shows us intense, graphic violence sparsely, seems to revel in it, and yet doesn’t romanticize it by concealing it or making it cartoonish.
I know there’s going to be a lot of talk about the ending of this film which is, yet again, inconsistent. Historically, though. Some will complain, no doubt, that it pays a disservice to those who suffered in the Holocaust, that it cheapens their suffering by denying its truth onscreen. But what I’ve gathered from Tarantino in the interviews I’ve read is the notion that had these characters existed, that’s how it would’ve ended. And you know what? That’s how it should’ve ended.
“Inglourious Basterds” is an apparent conflict of intent and delivery that winds up striking a flawless balance between its two dueling natures. I’ll put it this way: I’m not Jewish, but after having seen this film, I kind of wish I were.
Since too much time has passed to warrant a standard review of “Ponyo” – Hayao Miyazaki’s latest visually explosive masterpiece – I felt a special kind of procedure was in order. So, on a whim, a close friend and I decided to smoke a bowl and go see it at our local theater. What came as a result of that decision was an amazingly rewarding artistic experience. It was like seeing a young Ludwig van Beethoven blend in with the stars as “Ode to Joy” blared on the soundtrack for the first time in Bernard Rose’s “Immortal Beloved.” Only this time, that level of astonishment persisted for the entire duration of the film.
Let’s deal exclusively with the opening sequence. Jelly fish float freely as schools of brightly colored fish swim by. Their movements are balletic. Pockets of color burst intermittently and there are innumerable fantastic creatures gliding above and scurrying atop the seabed. There’s a tall man with long, flowing red hair standing inside a giant bubble at the edge of some kind of aquatic vehicle. He’s squirting droplets of golden liquid onto the ground which explode into rainbows. You can read that again if you’d like. Let it sink in. It’s often suggested that our own imaginative faculties can outdo anything portrayed on the silver screen. Well, it’s my absolute, unadulterated pleasure to tell you that that is not the case, here. Not even close. The realization of his imagination onscreen outdoes whatever you could produce in your mind’s eye after having read that descriptive passage. The visuals presented in this film evoke a kind of celestial chaos.
The characters are insanely cute and lovable. Everyone in the town is kind and sincere. The only people portrayed with any semblance of negativity are, at best, grumpy; “curmudgeonly” would be too strong an adjective. But that’s okay. It’s a kids movie, after all, and a slew of benign characters is anything but unreasonable. Though I must say that if it weren’t for the truly brilliant and creative visual strategy the film has going for it, it might have drowned (no pun intended) me in sweetness. But the film DOES have a brilliant and creative (a vast understatement) visual strategy. It IS thrilling to behold and totally absorbing. It’s what Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” wished it could’ve been: “Under the Sea,” indeed. With Pixar’s track record coming to mind, the fact that all of the images with which I was bombarded today were hand drawn blows me away. If you thought “Up” was the apex of optically-stimulating children’s entertainment this year (as I once did), see “Ponyo.”
I can’t remember ever being this happy after seeing a movie in theaters. I’m…joyous, for fuck’s sake, the fact that I’m still pretty high notwithstanding. “Ponyo” had me swept up in its G-rated, psychedelic glory.
What a stultifying disappointment “District 9″ is. With Peter Jackson as a producer along with a set of trailers asserting the film’s peculiarity, you’d be justified in expecting something special. This fact makes it all the more difficult to inform you that the final product is a real mess: original in conception only, vacant of compelling content, totally uneven in style and purpose, and pretty damn silly.
The movie begins with a series of interviews spliced with footage concerning the arrival and subsequent imprisonment of aliens in South Africa. This format persists for some time, even as the story shifts to detail the experiences of Wikus van der Merwe (Sharlto Copley), a white South African fieldworker for a company called MNU, as he carries out an assignment. The aliens inhabit a fenced-in, militarized slum, and it’s Wikus’ job to coerce said alien inhabitants into signing eviction notices which will consent to their deportation to a new housing facility. But does any of that really matter? No. The film’s interest in the actual operative capacity of District 9 is limited to exposition within the first 15 minutes. And it’s only provided as a backdrop for its devolution into a chase picture with bad CGI. While Wikus is inspecting a rundown shack, he comes across a device (later revealed to be a fuel source) which spits alien DNA onto his face and allows the film to mimic Cronenberg’s “The Fly” for a substantial amount of time.
Then there’s the good alien (a rarity, to be sure), named Christopher Johnson, who has a crazy plan to make a getaway. Oh, and he can cure Wikus of his alienitis as well! How tidy is that? All they have to do is steal some weapons, sneak into the MNU headquarters, blow some shit up, and retrieve the fuel canister (revealed at this point) needed to initiate takeoff. Did I mention that, at this point, the film has almost completely scrapped its documentary roots in favor of telling the Wikus-fugitive-”Fly” story straight on? The whole thing is like a less committed “Cloverfield.” Whatever technique serves the demands of the script is employed at whatever moment it is demanded. Sometimes it’s a documentary. Sometimes it’s footage of Wikus taped by his accompanying cameraman. Sometimes it’s straightforward and not intended to seem as though it’s in either of the other two categories. Uneven, uneven, uneven.
And then there’s the action element of the film; it’s like “Aliens” impregnated “Hotel Rwanda” while having an affair with “Independence Day.” There’s the ubiquitous angry military officer, perpetually grimacing and oh-so-willing to murder anything. There’s Wikus’ father-in-law, a conniving, dishonest businessman interested only in profit. It’s so clinical. The worst part about all of it is that I actually liked the characters; I cared about Wikus and Christopher Johnson on some level. Their success was something I wanted…on some level. But there’s only so much pandering and cliche-bombardment a man can take. I hope Christopher made it home. I hope Wikus finds happiness. I also hope I never have to see them in another movie.
What could’ve been probing, introspective, thought-provoking, even emotionally significant turns out to be none of the above. Leave the robotic suit stuff to Sigourney Weaver.
