Lettergrade: B
Capitalism: A Love Story is Michael Moore's screed on corporate greed and white collar crime with a strong emphasis on the mismanagement that led to last year's economic melt-down. Before I get into it, though, I should admit that in spite of the flaws, I'm usually a sucker for Moore's movies. Politically, I tend to agree with a good deal of what he says, and as a humorist, I greatly admire the way in which he goes about saying it. Love or hate him, he has consistently used his celebrity to shine a light on issues that he feels need public attention, and for that I have an endless amount of respect. His last few pictures have felt a little scattershot, ranty, and somewhat slim on tangible solutions, but nevertheless they're important, thought-provoking pictures that often feel like imperative viewing. How many wide-release films have you seen this year that actually try to _do_ something?
Capitalism stimulated two extremes for me: I found myself surprisingly emotional during sections of it (particularly the last part, starting with the story about the sit-in at the window and glass company in Chicago on through to the end), but at the same time I found myself a little atypically annoyed that Moore again seems to undercut his own objective a bit by omitting key points of view and by taking an overly harsh (yet populist) stance against those on the other end of his argument.
This picture opens with a cheesy educational film about the fall of the Roman Empire which details how corruption and tyranny ultimately led the people to rise up and overthrow the established order. If the implication isn't clear enough, Moore inserts quick shots of politicians of the present and recent past. Among the points he argues in this picture is that capitalism as we know it has been distorted and rigged to the point where the upper 1% of the US population controls nearly 95% of the wealth, and that they've conned the rest of us into fighting over the scraps that are left instead of recognizing the inequity. Throughout the film, Moore profiles families that have lost their homes in the mortgage crisis (and companies that prey on the acquisition and resale of them), the Wall Street phenomenon of derivatives and split derivatives (comparing the institution to an insane mega-casino), and makes a persuasive argument for how deregulation, Union-busting, and obscene greed in the 80s and 90s has led to the virtual eradication of America's middle-class.
Moore uses every tool in his arsenal to tug at your heart strings and sense of decency: He includes multiple devastating testimonials and portraits of families who have lost everything, he has the survivors of deceased loved-ones cry on camera, and he flashes to emotionally charged images, such as post Katrina New Orleans, whenever he feels he can get some juice out of them. A number of other Michael Moore classic bits reappear as well, such as having Mike show up at some corporate headquarters with a camera crew, and then act surprised when security promptly covers his lens and shows him the door.
Similar to his previous productions, the approach is designed to aggressively inform, to incite passion, and to get in a good laugh whenever possible in order to make the whole thing palatable to those who might not be inclined to sit through this kind of thing otherwise. As always, the editing is sharp and incisive, and the archival team located some hysterical retro film and music in order to enhance the picture's considerable wit. While it's effective, I also can't deny that it's propaganda in the most pure sense of the term and manipulative as hell.
During the middle of the picture, after around 45 - 50 minutes of hearing how hopelessly fucked we are economically, I found myself wondering where the film was going, but in the last section Moore shifts gears a bit and profiles a number of small businesses and individuals who act out of a sense a fairness, despite the fact that the law does not require them to do so. Toward the end of the picture, it feels like Moore is actually spending more time with people who go out of their way to do good for other people for a change, and the picture winds up being oddly inspirational in a way that I don't believe any of his other pictures have been.
I guess you can think of each of Moore's recent pictures as a call to arms for liberal causes, and while he's continuously chosen subject material that is very potent and relevant, again I worry that they're becoming increasingly unfocused. Bowling For Columbine had the clear objective of swaying public opinion on gun control, with a few awkward detours into why Americans are a violent lot to begin with. Fahrenheit 9/11, which I didn't much care for, was sort of about the craziness that ensued after the terror attacks, but largely felt like an inartful smear piece. I happened to agree with his main point - that Bush ought not be reelected - but I felt that the way he went about making his case was scattershot, mean-spirited, and somewhat non-persuasive. SiCKO really stokes both sympathy and anger like no other picture he's made has, but after detailing the contours of a very large problem (and the bullshit arguments against implementing some kind of universal coverage), the movie failed to really chart out a clear way in which the problem might start to be remedied. On top of that, Moore was guilty of over-romanticizing socialized health care systems in other countries, all of which, while better than what we have presently, come with their own problems. Overplaying his hand there, as he does somewhat in Capitalism too, gives his critics a convenient way to dismiss the really good points he's making along with the sloppy ones.
Minor bitchings aside, though, I will say that the other week while watching Obama's address on health care reform to congress, I was quite struck that several of the health insurance horror-stories the president recounted would have felt right at home in SiCKO. Now, health care reform might well have been an important agenda for any president at this particular point in time, of course, but I had the feeling that Obama's speech wouldn't have been quite the same had Moore's film never existed. Either Moore was a little ahead of the curve in terms of understanding how big an issue health care reform would shortly become, or it was his willingness to take the material on in the first place that led to more of a national dialogue about where we are and where we need to be. In any case, it's hard to deny that he does have a good bead on many of the critical social-political issues of the day, and even if you find the guy to be an utterly obnoxious, bloviating asshole, it's usually worth listening to what he's got to say about them.
My review of SiCKO
September 24, 2009
September 19, 2009
The Informant! (09/19/09)
Lettergrade: F
You know, "hate" is an awfully strong word, but it's the only one that really comes to mind when thinking about Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!. Oh, it's started off well enough: The cast, which includes Matt Damon and Scott Bakula, is fantastic, and the true story of a delusional, dimwitted guy who sold out his agro product company, Archer Daniels Midland, to the FBI for price fixing not realizing that he himself would very likely be implicated in multiple corporate crime and embezzlement charges, sounded like fertile ground for at least a passably entertaining evening at the cinema. Perhaps it would sort of be like a comedic variant on Michael Mann's The Insider?
Ultimately, though, I really feel this movie, while amusing for short bursts, doesn't connect... somewhat because of the writing, but largely due to the way in which it is told. Structure first: The movie has a highly irritating way of keeping the audience on the outside of some key plot points for several scenes before letting you know what, exactly, is happening. I want to make the distinction that this can often be used for good dramatic effect, but that's not what this picture does. The difference is that a movie needs to be somewhat deliberate about what it is being unclear about it. Too often during this one I felt like I had simply missed some critical information, which is when "suspense" turns to "frustration" and then ultimately "apathy."
Building on that escalating sense of apathy was the picture's wafter-thin character material. I found Damon's character neither interesting nor sympathetic nor in any way relatable. Giving him funny hair, a fake nose, and a little extra weight seems to kind of hardwire his screen-time for comedy and comedy alone. A problem with that approach, however, is that it's almost like you're watching a stage clown or a Saturday Night Live character instead of a serious actor giving a dedicated performance. Again, I don't necessarily believe that every movie has to have a character that you like or want to root for, but at least we need to care about what happens to the people we're spending two hours with.
I thought that Damon's crazy internal monologues were really entertaining, and being a long time film-score nerd, I found it interesting that Soderbergh picked music legend Marvin Hamlisch out of retirement to write the jazzy, kitschy score. As the movie ground on, however, both really wore out their welcome fast and only further underlined that this is a project Soderbergh somewhat mishandled.
Other technical gripes are that the picture was largely shot on Red Camcorders instead of film, meaning that the picture, when projected on a large theater screen, was quite fuzzy and soft... almost appearing to be out of focus for large segments. Another byproduct of this format is that bright light sources appeared highly misty, particularly during daylight scenes. During segments of the movie, I found myself wondering if my allergies had returned and were affecting my vision, but when I looked around the theater I realized that everything else was perfectly clear: It was only the movie that was not. Soderbergh has shot most of his own movies since 2000 (under the name Peter Andrews), and it's something he really needs to get away from. Part of the idea behind not having everything be a one-man show is that someone can be there to tap the director on the shoulder every now and again and say, "you know, choosing that lens filter for the camera might not be the best idea." Many other scenes are dark and muddy, and in others still it feels like no one even bothered to point some lights at the actors.
Once upon a time, at least, Soderbergh made pictures that I really liked, but I believe the last time I could say that was in 2000 or so when he was nominated for dual Best Director Oscars for his work on Erin Brockovich and Traffic (the latter for which he won). His first post-Oscar picture was the artistically bankrupt Ocean's 11, which was intended as a fun bank-heist picture, but contained neither fun nor tension. He had two more attempts at making an Ocean's picture that works, and came up with similar results each time. The interstitial pictures have either been bloated and dull (Solaris) or have emphasized style over substance in a way that's awkward and ineffectual (The Good German).
I think he's officially blown his credit line with me, and I'll have to start automatically skipping his movies in the future. I had high hopes for The Informant! as a film that might have been similar to Brockovich in that it would tell an entertaining-yet-true story about corporate crime and some of the interesting people involved with it. The thing is, this movie is a lot funnier if you already know the details of what Mark Whitacre did and where his story is going. In fact, the picture seems to depend on some of that knowledge in order to make any sense at all. If you know those things, however, you might come to the wise conclusion that you should probably just stay home and watch something else.
My review of Ocean's 13
You know, "hate" is an awfully strong word, but it's the only one that really comes to mind when thinking about Steven Soderbergh's The Informant!. Oh, it's started off well enough: The cast, which includes Matt Damon and Scott Bakula, is fantastic, and the true story of a delusional, dimwitted guy who sold out his agro product company, Archer Daniels Midland, to the FBI for price fixing not realizing that he himself would very likely be implicated in multiple corporate crime and embezzlement charges, sounded like fertile ground for at least a passably entertaining evening at the cinema. Perhaps it would sort of be like a comedic variant on Michael Mann's The Insider?
Ultimately, though, I really feel this movie, while amusing for short bursts, doesn't connect... somewhat because of the writing, but largely due to the way in which it is told. Structure first: The movie has a highly irritating way of keeping the audience on the outside of some key plot points for several scenes before letting you know what, exactly, is happening. I want to make the distinction that this can often be used for good dramatic effect, but that's not what this picture does. The difference is that a movie needs to be somewhat deliberate about what it is being unclear about it. Too often during this one I felt like I had simply missed some critical information, which is when "suspense" turns to "frustration" and then ultimately "apathy."
Building on that escalating sense of apathy was the picture's wafter-thin character material. I found Damon's character neither interesting nor sympathetic nor in any way relatable. Giving him funny hair, a fake nose, and a little extra weight seems to kind of hardwire his screen-time for comedy and comedy alone. A problem with that approach, however, is that it's almost like you're watching a stage clown or a Saturday Night Live character instead of a serious actor giving a dedicated performance. Again, I don't necessarily believe that every movie has to have a character that you like or want to root for, but at least we need to care about what happens to the people we're spending two hours with.
I thought that Damon's crazy internal monologues were really entertaining, and being a long time film-score nerd, I found it interesting that Soderbergh picked music legend Marvin Hamlisch out of retirement to write the jazzy, kitschy score. As the movie ground on, however, both really wore out their welcome fast and only further underlined that this is a project Soderbergh somewhat mishandled.
Other technical gripes are that the picture was largely shot on Red Camcorders instead of film, meaning that the picture, when projected on a large theater screen, was quite fuzzy and soft... almost appearing to be out of focus for large segments. Another byproduct of this format is that bright light sources appeared highly misty, particularly during daylight scenes. During segments of the movie, I found myself wondering if my allergies had returned and were affecting my vision, but when I looked around the theater I realized that everything else was perfectly clear: It was only the movie that was not. Soderbergh has shot most of his own movies since 2000 (under the name Peter Andrews), and it's something he really needs to get away from. Part of the idea behind not having everything be a one-man show is that someone can be there to tap the director on the shoulder every now and again and say, "you know, choosing that lens filter for the camera might not be the best idea." Many other scenes are dark and muddy, and in others still it feels like no one even bothered to point some lights at the actors.
Once upon a time, at least, Soderbergh made pictures that I really liked, but I believe the last time I could say that was in 2000 or so when he was nominated for dual Best Director Oscars for his work on Erin Brockovich and Traffic (the latter for which he won). His first post-Oscar picture was the artistically bankrupt Ocean's 11, which was intended as a fun bank-heist picture, but contained neither fun nor tension. He had two more attempts at making an Ocean's picture that works, and came up with similar results each time. The interstitial pictures have either been bloated and dull (Solaris) or have emphasized style over substance in a way that's awkward and ineffectual (The Good German).
I think he's officially blown his credit line with me, and I'll have to start automatically skipping his movies in the future. I had high hopes for The Informant! as a film that might have been similar to Brockovich in that it would tell an entertaining-yet-true story about corporate crime and some of the interesting people involved with it. The thing is, this movie is a lot funnier if you already know the details of what Mark Whitacre did and where his story is going. In fact, the picture seems to depend on some of that knowledge in order to make any sense at all. If you know those things, however, you might come to the wise conclusion that you should probably just stay home and watch something else.
My review of Ocean's 13
September 5, 2009
Extract (9/05/09)
Lettergrade: B-
If you look at it purely on a story / plot level, Extract doesn't really have a lot going on, but then neither do Mike Judge's other pictures: 2006's underrated Idiocracy and 1999's cultural milestone Office Space. The pleasure of those movies (and this one) is not in what happens as much as Judge's warped perspective on the world and the people who populate it. His characterizations, usually made up of slackers, dimwits, and stoners, get huge laughs because they're not that far off from people you probably know or at least have met.
The movie isn't likely to have the same cultural impact that Office Space did. Even the tag line of that picture - "Work sucks" - struck a deep cultural chord that even now, 10 years later, resonates with me and everyone else I know who has to work for a living. Nevertheless, Extract is a pleasant farce and certainly worth having a look at when time permits.
The schmucky every-man in this one is played by Arrested Development's Jason Bateman, who owns an a small flavor extract company in small-town California. He's in a sex-deprived marriage with Kristin Wiig, and thinking about selling his business to a larger corporate parent. That's complicated by an accident at work which claims an employee's testicle, followed by the arrival of con-artist Mila Kunis who secretly encourages said employee to sue instead of settling. Bateman immediately lusts after Kunis, but feels terrible about wanting to stray from his marriage. One night, his bar-tendin' buddy played by Ben Affleck (in what might be his finest screen performance) helps Bateman come up with a brilliant plan to hire a kid to seduce Wiig, thus freeing Bateman's conscious to lust after Kunis.
Bateman, Affleck, and Wiig are all expertly cast, but as with Judge's other movies, it is the many wonderful bit parts that often steal the show, particularly David Koechner as an annoying neighbor, Dustin Milligan as Brad, the faux pool-cleaner, and Matt Schulze as an intense pot-dealer who only has one scene.
I will say, however, that in spite of the incisive comedy the loose plotting does drag the proceedings down a little. If I think about it, I can vaguely recall that the last third of Office Space mainly revolves around a failed embezzlement scheme, and contains very few laughs. Idiocracy, after a killer first 30 minutes, falls apart much earlier - around the time President Camacho shows up. Extract is a bit more "even" than those movies... the laughs probably aren't as big, but at least they cover the picture from head to tail.
As with his other movies, the production value is a little sparse, and nothing about the way the film has been made feels terribly cinematic -- almost as if it's a movie that Judge decided to make around his neighborhood with his friends. Nevertheless, I think this serves as a good illustration to my continued theory that comedy is often a little funnier when it feels kinda cheap.
August 29, 2009
Taking Woodstock (08/29/09)
Lettergrade: D
We saw this one because my wife and I often love Ang Lee movies, but for a number of reasons I cannot really recommend Taking Woodstock. It wasn't that bad to start with: I really like Demetri Martin's stand-up comedy as well as his TV show, but had never really seen him in a dramatic acting role like this. Here he plays Elliot Teichberg, a very likable but sad aspiring artist who moved back to upstate New York in order to help his Russian Jewish immigrant parents manage their ratty motel in the country. For one reason or another, he never left. Ultimately, he uses his position in local government and his connection to nearby dairy farmer Max Yasgur (played by Eugene Levy) in order to allow the August 1969 event known as Woodstock to come together.
In spite of my admiration for Lee and his cast, I'm not really into Woodstock era music, I can't claim to really have a strong connection to hippie culture and what it might have been about in 1969, and I've never taken an hallucinogenic drug nor do I have any interest in doing so. Above all else, I hate crowds. All these things kind of conspired to create a great indifference within me over what happened during much of the picture's painfully sluggish running time.
But wait, there's more: I felt that the very winning characters who appear on-screen are woefully under-developed. Demetri in particular appears to be gay, but it's unclear how "out" he his to his friends and family in addition to how at peace he might be with his own sexuality. We see him kiss women and men in the movie... but is this the first time he has done the latter? Call me simple minded, but I kinda need a little more substance. And I sort of want details and clear internal struggles like this to go somewhere.
The movie was rushed a little in order to get to Cannes in May, and then rushed again to get into theaters around the 40th anniversary of Woodstock in mid-August. Maybe a little more time could have made this movie more meaningful? Maybe not. In any case, it's sort of a waste of time.
We saw this one because my wife and I often love Ang Lee movies, but for a number of reasons I cannot really recommend Taking Woodstock. It wasn't that bad to start with: I really like Demetri Martin's stand-up comedy as well as his TV show, but had never really seen him in a dramatic acting role like this. Here he plays Elliot Teichberg, a very likable but sad aspiring artist who moved back to upstate New York in order to help his Russian Jewish immigrant parents manage their ratty motel in the country. For one reason or another, he never left. Ultimately, he uses his position in local government and his connection to nearby dairy farmer Max Yasgur (played by Eugene Levy) in order to allow the August 1969 event known as Woodstock to come together.
In spite of my admiration for Lee and his cast, I'm not really into Woodstock era music, I can't claim to really have a strong connection to hippie culture and what it might have been about in 1969, and I've never taken an hallucinogenic drug nor do I have any interest in doing so. Above all else, I hate crowds. All these things kind of conspired to create a great indifference within me over what happened during much of the picture's painfully sluggish running time.
But wait, there's more: I felt that the very winning characters who appear on-screen are woefully under-developed. Demetri in particular appears to be gay, but it's unclear how "out" he his to his friends and family in addition to how at peace he might be with his own sexuality. We see him kiss women and men in the movie... but is this the first time he has done the latter? Call me simple minded, but I kinda need a little more substance. And I sort of want details and clear internal struggles like this to go somewhere.
The movie was rushed a little in order to get to Cannes in May, and then rushed again to get into theaters around the 40th anniversary of Woodstock in mid-August. Maybe a little more time could have made this movie more meaningful? Maybe not. In any case, it's sort of a waste of time.
August 22, 2009
Inglourious Basterds (08/22/09)
Lettergrade: B+
There are several really good sequences in Inglourious Basterds, but it didn't quite sizzle for me like some of Quentin Taratino's other movies have. In particular, I guess I'm unfairly comparing this picture to the wildly entertaining Kill Bill movies, which seemed to somewhat set the template for this phase of his career. By that, I mean that Bill was very self-conscious, stylized cinema that switched film stocks furiously, and liberally borrowed from the wide spectrum of pop-culture and classic genré movies on a ridiculously grand scale, right down to cannibalizing its entire film score from old Spaghetti westerns and obscure action / horror flicks.
The thing with Kill Bill is that it was able to do all this with a great deal of joy and heart -- something that was largely absent from Deathproof, his almost stogy half of 2007's Grindhouse double-bill that he shared with Robert Rodriguez. In that one, there was a lot of amusing chatter, but precious few moments that took your breath away. Somewhere among all the bulky dialogue and the kitschy cinema tricks, the heart of the picture got lost.
Basterds is considerably more subtle than those movies in terms of style, but lands somewhere between the two when it comes to emotional beats that really connect. The strong character moments and the trademark Tarantino kitch that he does inject work beautifully, but I found myself wanting much more of each. I'm in the rare minority of people I know who was really impressed that after Pulp Fiction, a brassy one-of-a-kind, in-your-face masterpiece with a ton of youth appeal, he chose to make Jackie Brown, a more traditional heist picture based on an Elmore Leonard novel with two obscure b-movie actors from the 70s in the lead roles. I admired that instead of hitting the same buttons that people responded to in his last picture, he chose to do something mature and thoughtful that his new audience might not necessarily like. Perhaps at long last, I can somewhat understand why fans of Pulp felt a bit let down by Jackie: Because he's recently struck a few chords that I really like, I guess I was left a little frustrated that he decided to slow things down a bit and try something new.
Among the elements that really work in this picture is much of the wonderful supporting cast, including, in particular, Austrian-born actor Christoph Waltz who steals every scene he's in as the charmingly vile Nazi Col. Hans Landa, otherly known as the "Jew Hunter." Another exceptional standout is Mélanie Laurent, who plays an escaped Jewish girl hiding in Paris after Landa murders her family early in the picture.
The Basterds themselves, a team of Jewish American soldiers who have been dropped into Nazi occupied France in order to savagely murder as many Germans as they can, are led by Brad Pitt. Although I generally like him as an actor, this felt like a rare role in which he was miscast. His accent is hysterical, but he's also one of the few characters on screen who never fully disappears into his role. Tarantino is so good at casting exceptional actors for key parts in his films, sometimes out of complete obscurity and/or career purgatory. Landing Pitt for one of the leads might have been enough to get the movie green-lit, but something tells me they might have been better off had someone else gotten the part.
But a lot of this is just minor bitching. It's a Tarantino movie: They're usually interesting and worth going out of your way to see, and this one is too. Many groups started complaining about this one already: Jewish commentators about the anti-Semitic undertones, historians about Tarantino's, um, liberal interpretation of the end of the war, and audiences in general about the horrific scalping scenes and overall violence. But like most Taratino movies, at it's best it's really remarkable cinema, and at worst... well, it's still a hell of a lot of fun.
My review of Grindhouse
There are several really good sequences in Inglourious Basterds, but it didn't quite sizzle for me like some of Quentin Taratino's other movies have. In particular, I guess I'm unfairly comparing this picture to the wildly entertaining Kill Bill movies, which seemed to somewhat set the template for this phase of his career. By that, I mean that Bill was very self-conscious, stylized cinema that switched film stocks furiously, and liberally borrowed from the wide spectrum of pop-culture and classic genré movies on a ridiculously grand scale, right down to cannibalizing its entire film score from old Spaghetti westerns and obscure action / horror flicks.
The thing with Kill Bill is that it was able to do all this with a great deal of joy and heart -- something that was largely absent from Deathproof, his almost stogy half of 2007's Grindhouse double-bill that he shared with Robert Rodriguez. In that one, there was a lot of amusing chatter, but precious few moments that took your breath away. Somewhere among all the bulky dialogue and the kitschy cinema tricks, the heart of the picture got lost.
Basterds is considerably more subtle than those movies in terms of style, but lands somewhere between the two when it comes to emotional beats that really connect. The strong character moments and the trademark Tarantino kitch that he does inject work beautifully, but I found myself wanting much more of each. I'm in the rare minority of people I know who was really impressed that after Pulp Fiction, a brassy one-of-a-kind, in-your-face masterpiece with a ton of youth appeal, he chose to make Jackie Brown, a more traditional heist picture based on an Elmore Leonard novel with two obscure b-movie actors from the 70s in the lead roles. I admired that instead of hitting the same buttons that people responded to in his last picture, he chose to do something mature and thoughtful that his new audience might not necessarily like. Perhaps at long last, I can somewhat understand why fans of Pulp felt a bit let down by Jackie: Because he's recently struck a few chords that I really like, I guess I was left a little frustrated that he decided to slow things down a bit and try something new.
Among the elements that really work in this picture is much of the wonderful supporting cast, including, in particular, Austrian-born actor Christoph Waltz who steals every scene he's in as the charmingly vile Nazi Col. Hans Landa, otherly known as the "Jew Hunter." Another exceptional standout is Mélanie Laurent, who plays an escaped Jewish girl hiding in Paris after Landa murders her family early in the picture.
The Basterds themselves, a team of Jewish American soldiers who have been dropped into Nazi occupied France in order to savagely murder as many Germans as they can, are led by Brad Pitt. Although I generally like him as an actor, this felt like a rare role in which he was miscast. His accent is hysterical, but he's also one of the few characters on screen who never fully disappears into his role. Tarantino is so good at casting exceptional actors for key parts in his films, sometimes out of complete obscurity and/or career purgatory. Landing Pitt for one of the leads might have been enough to get the movie green-lit, but something tells me they might have been better off had someone else gotten the part.
But a lot of this is just minor bitching. It's a Tarantino movie: They're usually interesting and worth going out of your way to see, and this one is too. Many groups started complaining about this one already: Jewish commentators about the anti-Semitic undertones, historians about Tarantino's, um, liberal interpretation of the end of the war, and audiences in general about the horrific scalping scenes and overall violence. But like most Taratino movies, at it's best it's really remarkable cinema, and at worst... well, it's still a hell of a lot of fun.
My review of Grindhouse
August 8, 2009
Julie & Julia (08/08/09)
Lettergrade: B-
I probably wouldn't see Julie & Julia on my own, but my wife who, like the first half of the film's title, keeps a very entertaining food blog, wouldn't miss it. I've only attended Nora Ephron movies occasionally, and usually don't think much of them. Her filmography includes such instant classics as You've Got Mail, Michael, and most horrifically, that shitty Bewitched remake that Will Ferrell was in. Nevertheless I was quite surprised to find that there was a lot about this movie that I quite liked.
I've been a life-long plain eater, and as such I cannot say that all the French cuisine that Julia Child prepares throughout the flick had my mouth watering, but the real pleasure for me here, aside from the stellar acting from Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, was that I found a connection with the parallel stories of the two women in different time periods who arrived at points in their lives where they simply wanted something more than what was in front of them. Julia Child does it by learning how to become a master chef in 1950s Paris, where her diplomat husband is stationed, and then spending years attempting to get her future-landmark cookbook, Mastering The Art Of French Cooking, picked up. Julie Powell, living in Brooklyn around 2003 or so, attempts to cook every single recipe from that same book within the span of a year while keeping a very detailed, entertaining blog about it. If you really love to do something, why not go after it? If you're lucky, you'll figure out how to make a living along the way.
Perhaps it's just where I'm at in my life at the moment, but another poignant element for me was Julie's feeling that her friends have run circles around her, both in career and in adult life. A lot of the criticism directed at the movie faults the "Julie" half for being considerably less interesting than the Julia Child material. That may be valid, but somehow I feel like this is a good marriage of subjects. I'm not sure I'd have a lot of interest in seeing a straight Julia Child picture by itself, and I don't believe Julie's story would hold up well if divorced from that of her beloved cookbook's author. The intercutting between the two story-lines evokes The Godfather Part II, but certainly I can think of lesser movies to borrow a device from.
The movie feels a bit longer than its runtime, but what the hell? It's an entertaining picture with great acting that's witty and meaningful without being saccharine or cloy. Do you think anyone's going to walk out of G.I. Joe this weekend saying that?
I probably wouldn't see Julie & Julia on my own, but my wife who, like the first half of the film's title, keeps a very entertaining food blog, wouldn't miss it. I've only attended Nora Ephron movies occasionally, and usually don't think much of them. Her filmography includes such instant classics as You've Got Mail, Michael, and most horrifically, that shitty Bewitched remake that Will Ferrell was in. Nevertheless I was quite surprised to find that there was a lot about this movie that I quite liked.
I've been a life-long plain eater, and as such I cannot say that all the French cuisine that Julia Child prepares throughout the flick had my mouth watering, but the real pleasure for me here, aside from the stellar acting from Meryl Streep and Amy Adams, was that I found a connection with the parallel stories of the two women in different time periods who arrived at points in their lives where they simply wanted something more than what was in front of them. Julia Child does it by learning how to become a master chef in 1950s Paris, where her diplomat husband is stationed, and then spending years attempting to get her future-landmark cookbook, Mastering The Art Of French Cooking, picked up. Julie Powell, living in Brooklyn around 2003 or so, attempts to cook every single recipe from that same book within the span of a year while keeping a very detailed, entertaining blog about it. If you really love to do something, why not go after it? If you're lucky, you'll figure out how to make a living along the way.
Perhaps it's just where I'm at in my life at the moment, but another poignant element for me was Julie's feeling that her friends have run circles around her, both in career and in adult life. A lot of the criticism directed at the movie faults the "Julie" half for being considerably less interesting than the Julia Child material. That may be valid, but somehow I feel like this is a good marriage of subjects. I'm not sure I'd have a lot of interest in seeing a straight Julia Child picture by itself, and I don't believe Julie's story would hold up well if divorced from that of her beloved cookbook's author. The intercutting between the two story-lines evokes The Godfather Part II, but certainly I can think of lesser movies to borrow a device from.
The movie feels a bit longer than its runtime, but what the hell? It's an entertaining picture with great acting that's witty and meaningful without being saccharine or cloy. Do you think anyone's going to walk out of G.I. Joe this weekend saying that?
July 19, 2009
July 16, 2009
Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince (07/16/09)
Lettergrade: C
The Harry Potter books get better the further into the series you get, but I realized while watching this new one, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, that the films have been doing the opposite for me. I've had that nagging feeling since seeing the fourth movie, Goblet Of Fire, directed by Mike Newell, which distilled its very long (but very good) antecedent novel into a 2.5 hour movie and lost a lot of the soul in the process. I complained about him at the time, but now that we're here, I'd take Newell back in a heartbeat.
Part six was made by David Yates, who also directed part five. Both movies have the same problems, which are almost too numerous to wrap my head around. I'm one to who believes that a movie need not recreate the plot of book precisely as long as the spirit and sentiment are both well honored. My problem isn't with what was changed or omitted: It's more that what is there often fails to have a effective dramatic impact and tends to feel flat and perfunctory, which is to say that several story lines from the book are hinted at, but not given much follow-through. Far too many scenes are messy and without a clear focus.
I have a feeling that Yates is a very emotionally reserved person, and one of the big crimes of his two Potter films is that he's taken books that brim with imagination and sophisticated, interesting characters, and has made them into films that are kinda one-note and dull. Even though the stories have been getting darker, we're still talking about teenage wizards here, and the books have managed to have a great deal of fun while steadily growing more serious. Why is there so little joy in Yates' Potter movies?
The screenplay discards a lot of little, easy-to-film plot devices that might have made everything stick together and flow better. One example is minor, but the principle is very important: Early in the book, Dumbledore tells Harry that he will be taking private lessons with him this year, but does not explain what the nature of those lessons will be. It is exciting because Harry walks around for a bit, wondering with his friends if he'll be learning special defensive magic spells, etc, until the first lesson arrives and he is surprised to find that Dumbledore means to educate him about the history of Tom Riddle, the boy who would grow up to be the villainous Voledmort. Now, in the movie Dumbledore never tells Harry that private lessons are coming: He just calls him to his office one night, and they begin. What's missing is the fantastic lead-up to that first lesson, which both provides the pleasure of anticipating what's going to happen and then makes the moment seem more important when it arrives. This is one of the great "question / answer" devices of dramatic storytelling that J.K. Rowling is great at it: Something mysterious is going on beyond that door in the room that we cannot get to? What in the world is happening in there? Well, we aren't told for a while, so it creates a mini mystery to chew on for a bit.
Draco Malfoy, Harry's arch nemesis at Hogwart's, is up to no good with a secret mission in this story. The book has glimpses of him sneaking around and doing secretive things, but why do that when the movie can just show you everything right away and then treat you to a seemingly endless series of scenes of him doing it? Time and time again, dramatic mysteries like this are omitted from the film, including the biggest one of all -- the one that is practically screamed out by the title: "Who is the Half-Blood Prince?" Oh, that mystery is kept alive here and there, I guess, but it doesn't drive the film the way it drives the book, and when it is revealed toward the end, it is almost out of obligation and free of any dramatic heft. Sort of like, "Oh yeah, and here's what the title was supposed to mean."
The more I think about it, that's the thing that really chaps my ass about the two Yates films: All this masterful plotting was right there in the book, and it would have taken very litlte screentime to do it! In some cases, less! They had already built the sets and bought the actors there and everything -- All that was missing was a good understanding of the text and the will to put it on screen. I mean, the flippin' dialogue was already there too! Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves merely had to copy it over to the script and have the actors say it! In particular, I was very disappointed that the scenes where Harry and Dumbledore analyze what they've seen in the Tom Riddle flashbacks were omitted. One of the great pleasures of this particular book is that it is the first time Harry gets to spend a good deal of up-close and personal time with Dumbledore. The text is very rich: Dumbledore is an intelligent and seemingly warm man from a distance, but Harry finds him to be aloof and difficult to access as he gets to know him better. On another level, Dumbledore knows that Harry has a difficult mission ahead of him, and that he himself might not be around to see him through. Their long conversations are supposed to be about preparing Harry for the future, whether he knows it or not. At the end of the story, Harry is supposed to be much more in the adult world than he was at the beginning, but Yates omits most of these scenes and is not able to make us feel that otherwise. What a waste of some great source material and an enormous budget.
Moving on to technical comments, I thought the cinematography (by Amélie's Bruno Delbonnel) was gorgeous until we neared the climax, and then I started to feel it was way over the top. Things were way too filtered and processed looking... This is a fantasy movie that is predicated on a magical world existing between the cracks and in the hidden spaces of the one we live in. Why shoot it in a way that removes us from reality as much as possible?
Nicholas Hooper wrote the bland musical score for the previous movie, and his his work is even more conspicuously inadequate this time out. Even I, a non-musician, can spot number of places where memorable themes and strong music would have helped the picture immeasurably, and might have even saved it. Hooper had done a couple TV movies and nature documentaries before getting the job on Phoenix. To trust an important job to someone with so few qualifications and only vaguely relevant experience is a real shame. Even moreso when you consider that this is a series which contains excellent scores by John Williams and Patrick Doyle. Warner Bros. has apparently told Yates that they will not allow Hooper to return for further installments, which is great news indeed.
The editing by Mark Day is likewise a fucking travesty. We never get a good look at any of the rooms these characters are in, and important lines are played completely off camera or in wide shots where they fail to land with the audience in any meaningful way. Also, there are many scenes, like Slughorn's first class, where we look at his back pretty much the whole time he's talking! If you look at the scene, there's evidence that the proper coverage was there, but for some reason Day assembled everything in the least dynamic, least engaging way possible. Consistently, there's a ton of space between lines as well, which could have easily been tightened up to play better. Better yet, that valuable real estate could have been used to - oh, I don't know - insert more of the dialogue from the book.
I'm sad that they're sticking with this director for the last book (which will be split into two movies), because he's cheap and reportedly easy to work with. I guess it's the way of the world, but the series was much more interesting when big-name directors were allowed to put their own spin on the material and really interpret the books. Say what you will about Chris Columbus (parts 1 and 2), Alfonso Cuarón (part 3) and Newell, but at least they understood classical filmmaking inside and out and were able to do interesting things within those traditions, albeit to varrying degrees of success.
Part of their success came from hiring a good support team: Good editors, qualified composers, etc. The amazing set design team came pre installed when Yates joined the series for part 5, and the actors have always been top notch. He has hired great DPs for his two movies, and will be working with another great, Eduardo Serra (of Unbreakable and The Girl With The Pearl Earring fame) on the two Deathly Hallows flicks. Nevertheless, he's brought in bush-league semi-pros to handle some of the other key creative roles, and for movies of this kind of scope that's just unforgivable.
My review of Order Of The Phoenix
The Harry Potter books get better the further into the series you get, but I realized while watching this new one, Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, that the films have been doing the opposite for me. I've had that nagging feeling since seeing the fourth movie, Goblet Of Fire, directed by Mike Newell, which distilled its very long (but very good) antecedent novel into a 2.5 hour movie and lost a lot of the soul in the process. I complained about him at the time, but now that we're here, I'd take Newell back in a heartbeat.
Part six was made by David Yates, who also directed part five. Both movies have the same problems, which are almost too numerous to wrap my head around. I'm one to who believes that a movie need not recreate the plot of book precisely as long as the spirit and sentiment are both well honored. My problem isn't with what was changed or omitted: It's more that what is there often fails to have a effective dramatic impact and tends to feel flat and perfunctory, which is to say that several story lines from the book are hinted at, but not given much follow-through. Far too many scenes are messy and without a clear focus.
I have a feeling that Yates is a very emotionally reserved person, and one of the big crimes of his two Potter films is that he's taken books that brim with imagination and sophisticated, interesting characters, and has made them into films that are kinda one-note and dull. Even though the stories have been getting darker, we're still talking about teenage wizards here, and the books have managed to have a great deal of fun while steadily growing more serious. Why is there so little joy in Yates' Potter movies?
The screenplay discards a lot of little, easy-to-film plot devices that might have made everything stick together and flow better. One example is minor, but the principle is very important: Early in the book, Dumbledore tells Harry that he will be taking private lessons with him this year, but does not explain what the nature of those lessons will be. It is exciting because Harry walks around for a bit, wondering with his friends if he'll be learning special defensive magic spells, etc, until the first lesson arrives and he is surprised to find that Dumbledore means to educate him about the history of Tom Riddle, the boy who would grow up to be the villainous Voledmort. Now, in the movie Dumbledore never tells Harry that private lessons are coming: He just calls him to his office one night, and they begin. What's missing is the fantastic lead-up to that first lesson, which both provides the pleasure of anticipating what's going to happen and then makes the moment seem more important when it arrives. This is one of the great "question / answer" devices of dramatic storytelling that J.K. Rowling is great at it: Something mysterious is going on beyond that door in the room that we cannot get to? What in the world is happening in there? Well, we aren't told for a while, so it creates a mini mystery to chew on for a bit.
Draco Malfoy, Harry's arch nemesis at Hogwart's, is up to no good with a secret mission in this story. The book has glimpses of him sneaking around and doing secretive things, but why do that when the movie can just show you everything right away and then treat you to a seemingly endless series of scenes of him doing it? Time and time again, dramatic mysteries like this are omitted from the film, including the biggest one of all -- the one that is practically screamed out by the title: "Who is the Half-Blood Prince?" Oh, that mystery is kept alive here and there, I guess, but it doesn't drive the film the way it drives the book, and when it is revealed toward the end, it is almost out of obligation and free of any dramatic heft. Sort of like, "Oh yeah, and here's what the title was supposed to mean."
The more I think about it, that's the thing that really chaps my ass about the two Yates films: All this masterful plotting was right there in the book, and it would have taken very litlte screentime to do it! In some cases, less! They had already built the sets and bought the actors there and everything -- All that was missing was a good understanding of the text and the will to put it on screen. I mean, the flippin' dialogue was already there too! Yates and screenwriter Steve Kloves merely had to copy it over to the script and have the actors say it! In particular, I was very disappointed that the scenes where Harry and Dumbledore analyze what they've seen in the Tom Riddle flashbacks were omitted. One of the great pleasures of this particular book is that it is the first time Harry gets to spend a good deal of up-close and personal time with Dumbledore. The text is very rich: Dumbledore is an intelligent and seemingly warm man from a distance, but Harry finds him to be aloof and difficult to access as he gets to know him better. On another level, Dumbledore knows that Harry has a difficult mission ahead of him, and that he himself might not be around to see him through. Their long conversations are supposed to be about preparing Harry for the future, whether he knows it or not. At the end of the story, Harry is supposed to be much more in the adult world than he was at the beginning, but Yates omits most of these scenes and is not able to make us feel that otherwise. What a waste of some great source material and an enormous budget.
Moving on to technical comments, I thought the cinematography (by Amélie's Bruno Delbonnel) was gorgeous until we neared the climax, and then I started to feel it was way over the top. Things were way too filtered and processed looking... This is a fantasy movie that is predicated on a magical world existing between the cracks and in the hidden spaces of the one we live in. Why shoot it in a way that removes us from reality as much as possible?
Nicholas Hooper wrote the bland musical score for the previous movie, and his his work is even more conspicuously inadequate this time out. Even I, a non-musician, can spot number of places where memorable themes and strong music would have helped the picture immeasurably, and might have even saved it. Hooper had done a couple TV movies and nature documentaries before getting the job on Phoenix. To trust an important job to someone with so few qualifications and only vaguely relevant experience is a real shame. Even moreso when you consider that this is a series which contains excellent scores by John Williams and Patrick Doyle. Warner Bros. has apparently told Yates that they will not allow Hooper to return for further installments, which is great news indeed.
The editing by Mark Day is likewise a fucking travesty. We never get a good look at any of the rooms these characters are in, and important lines are played completely off camera or in wide shots where they fail to land with the audience in any meaningful way. Also, there are many scenes, like Slughorn's first class, where we look at his back pretty much the whole time he's talking! If you look at the scene, there's evidence that the proper coverage was there, but for some reason Day assembled everything in the least dynamic, least engaging way possible. Consistently, there's a ton of space between lines as well, which could have easily been tightened up to play better. Better yet, that valuable real estate could have been used to - oh, I don't know - insert more of the dialogue from the book.
I'm sad that they're sticking with this director for the last book (which will be split into two movies), because he's cheap and reportedly easy to work with. I guess it's the way of the world, but the series was much more interesting when big-name directors were allowed to put their own spin on the material and really interpret the books. Say what you will about Chris Columbus (parts 1 and 2), Alfonso Cuarón (part 3) and Newell, but at least they understood classical filmmaking inside and out and were able to do interesting things within those traditions, albeit to varrying degrees of success.
Part of their success came from hiring a good support team: Good editors, qualified composers, etc. The amazing set design team came pre installed when Yates joined the series for part 5, and the actors have always been top notch. He has hired great DPs for his two movies, and will be working with another great, Eduardo Serra (of Unbreakable and The Girl With The Pearl Earring fame) on the two Deathly Hallows flicks. Nevertheless, he's brought in bush-league semi-pros to handle some of the other key creative roles, and for movies of this kind of scope that's just unforgivable.
My review of Order Of The Phoenix
July 4, 2009
Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen (07/04/09)
Lettergrade: D
Critics, Transformers fans, and casual film-goers alike all agree that Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen is pretty bad. I don't feel like I need to bend over backward to make that argument. But trying to come up with something insightful - or even witty - to say about the movie is another story. In the first line of his essay, Roger Ebert calls the movie "a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments." How in the world can a bush league player like myself hope to compete with a comment like that?
I'll start by rehashing a number of observations I had about the first movie: Again, I could barely tell a single one of the robots apart (not counting Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and two illiterate black robots who are new to the cast this time). Megan Fox is still one of the worst actresses I've ever seen in a major motion picture, boasting, as others have noted, the appearance of the porn star and the acting talent to match. The cinematography is a little better this time, but is still marred by Michael Bay's signature preference for getting the lens as close to the subject as possible, then shaking the hell out of it as the shot happens. This, combined with the hyperactive editing, creates the feeling that you're watching the whole movie on a small boat in rough waters. What's wrong with actually getting a good look at whatever's happening on screen?
I loved the Transformers cartoon show when I was a kid, and one of the great pleasures of the first movie was that trailer voice-over maestro Peter Cullen was brought in to once again provide the voice of Optimus Prime. He's back this time, and is joined by more members of the old guard as well, most conspicuously voice god Frank Welker as Soundwave, who floats above the earth intercepting communications as a satellite.
I can't think of much else to say that hasn't already been said. The plot is ludicrous, incomprehensible, and barely worth discussing. Logic is not part of this world, nor is continuity: On many occasions, you'll see a robot doing something in one shot, and then in the next shot, that exact same robot will be doing something totally different (or at least, I think it's the same robot). If you could tolerate and enjoy the first movie, you'll probably have the same feelings about this one. The first movie probably pissed me off a little more. Either I've mellowed a little or I was going in with lowered hopes.
The comic relief is puzzling. Julie White and Kevin Dunn return as Shia LaBeouf's parents. White, a really funny actress, is again allowed to just basically do whatever the hell she wants and gnaw the scenery at will, such as during an extended sequence where she consumes pot brownies that she unknowingly purchased at a college campus bake-sale, and loses her shit for minutes on end (because she had never heard of pot during the 60s and 70s, apparently, and the brownies also contained concentrated doses of LSD). This is a movie where everything is so garish, and in-your-face, and utterly unconvincing that events like this didn't even really phase me.
One that did, though, happens with John Turturro, who returns as Agent Simmons. At one point during the film's third act in Egypt, he removes his trousers, revealing a tight thong underneath. "What's that?" one of the characters understandably wonders aloud. Off-camera -- and very quickly, almost so as not to be understood by those who are not paying close, close attention -- Turtorro seems to say, "Oh, I wear these when I want to fuck." I'm not sure how a line like that wound up in a PG-13 summer popcorn movie (or even what it is supposed to mean in the context of the scene), but suffice to say it was the most interesting one of the movie.
I'll leave you with a few links. The first is an hysterical post from Topless Robot, detailing the film's many incongruities. I also like how Rob ably points out that there's no reason for much of the plot to even happen if the All-Spark shard could easily do what it does to Optimus significantly earlier in the flick:
Topless Robot - Rob's Transformers 2 F.A.Q.s
My review of the first Transformers
And finally, a Verizon Fios commercial that came out a year or two back. I know he didn't direct it, but I still consider it the best thing that Michael Bay has ever been involved with:
Critics, Transformers fans, and casual film-goers alike all agree that Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen is pretty bad. I don't feel like I need to bend over backward to make that argument. But trying to come up with something insightful - or even witty - to say about the movie is another story. In the first line of his essay, Roger Ebert calls the movie "a horrible experience of unbearable length, briefly punctuated by three or four amusing moments." How in the world can a bush league player like myself hope to compete with a comment like that?
I'll start by rehashing a number of observations I had about the first movie: Again, I could barely tell a single one of the robots apart (not counting Optimus Prime, Bumblebee and two illiterate black robots who are new to the cast this time). Megan Fox is still one of the worst actresses I've ever seen in a major motion picture, boasting, as others have noted, the appearance of the porn star and the acting talent to match. The cinematography is a little better this time, but is still marred by Michael Bay's signature preference for getting the lens as close to the subject as possible, then shaking the hell out of it as the shot happens. This, combined with the hyperactive editing, creates the feeling that you're watching the whole movie on a small boat in rough waters. What's wrong with actually getting a good look at whatever's happening on screen?
I loved the Transformers cartoon show when I was a kid, and one of the great pleasures of the first movie was that trailer voice-over maestro Peter Cullen was brought in to once again provide the voice of Optimus Prime. He's back this time, and is joined by more members of the old guard as well, most conspicuously voice god Frank Welker as Soundwave, who floats above the earth intercepting communications as a satellite.
I can't think of much else to say that hasn't already been said. The plot is ludicrous, incomprehensible, and barely worth discussing. Logic is not part of this world, nor is continuity: On many occasions, you'll see a robot doing something in one shot, and then in the next shot, that exact same robot will be doing something totally different (or at least, I think it's the same robot). If you could tolerate and enjoy the first movie, you'll probably have the same feelings about this one. The first movie probably pissed me off a little more. Either I've mellowed a little or I was going in with lowered hopes.
The comic relief is puzzling. Julie White and Kevin Dunn return as Shia LaBeouf's parents. White, a really funny actress, is again allowed to just basically do whatever the hell she wants and gnaw the scenery at will, such as during an extended sequence where she consumes pot brownies that she unknowingly purchased at a college campus bake-sale, and loses her shit for minutes on end (because she had never heard of pot during the 60s and 70s, apparently, and the brownies also contained concentrated doses of LSD). This is a movie where everything is so garish, and in-your-face, and utterly unconvincing that events like this didn't even really phase me.
One that did, though, happens with John Turturro, who returns as Agent Simmons. At one point during the film's third act in Egypt, he removes his trousers, revealing a tight thong underneath. "What's that?" one of the characters understandably wonders aloud. Off-camera -- and very quickly, almost so as not to be understood by those who are not paying close, close attention -- Turtorro seems to say, "Oh, I wear these when I want to fuck." I'm not sure how a line like that wound up in a PG-13 summer popcorn movie (or even what it is supposed to mean in the context of the scene), but suffice to say it was the most interesting one of the movie.
I'll leave you with a few links. The first is an hysterical post from Topless Robot, detailing the film's many incongruities. I also like how Rob ably points out that there's no reason for much of the plot to even happen if the All-Spark shard could easily do what it does to Optimus significantly earlier in the flick:
Topless Robot - Rob's Transformers 2 F.A.Q.s
My review of the first Transformers
And finally, a Verizon Fios commercial that came out a year or two back. I know he didn't direct it, but I still consider it the best thing that Michael Bay has ever been involved with:
July 3, 2009
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