Half-Assed Movie Reviews

November 18, 2008: What Just Happened

What Just Happened is a satire of the filmmaking industry directed by Barry Levinson, not unlike 1995’s Get Shorty, a satire of the filmmaking industry directed by Barry Sonnenberg.  Where these movies differ, however, is in how funny they are.  Get Shorty is great.  This one, not so much.

Apparently this is based on memoirs by actual movie producer Art Linson, who was involved with many notable comedies and action films of the past three decades.  This makes me want to read the book, but the film is a disappointing interpretation.  The movie centres around producer De Niro’s attempt to solve problems in the week leading up to the start of shooting a new movie, with Bruce Willis playing himself as the star of the movie who is proving difficult to handle.

Robert De Niro is using all of his signature acting tics, and I continue to be confused about whether he acquired these caricatured mannerisms through the roles he’s played, whether that’s how he actually is, or whether he’s watched too many parodies of his acting and has turned into a full parody of himself.  The eyebrow raising, cocking of the head, squinting when trying to explain things, and shrugging of the shoulders are all exactly as I’ve seen them depicted on Saturday Night Live and in other places through the decades.  It’s kind of sad, seeing him behave this way in low-quality formulaic stuff like What Just Happened and Righteous Kill earlier in the year, when we can turn to his earlier work and fully realized potential in The Godfather: Part II and Raging Bull and Taxi Driver to cite the obvious examples, and The Deer Hunter and Midnight Run and Heat to cite perhaps less obvious examples.  Maybe it’s noteworthy that the only comedy I mention in there is Midnight Run, but I think that’s a perfect example of my earlier stated claim that De Niro can really do comedy when he puts his mind to it.

Here again we have De Niro attempting comedy, but there’s nothing much for him to work with.  That’s not all his fault.  What this all really boils down to is that the core story of the movie is just dull.  I don’t care what happens, and the situations seem contrived and like they have been put together just to generate funny situations.  Mind you, there are nice quirky and “actorly” supporting roles for Bruce Willis and John Turturro.  Also, the inimitable Catherine Keener gets a rare chance to play a powerful character rather than an outcast or someone down on their luck.  She’s a no-nonsense movie executive who is in control and calling the shots, and not at all like the cartoonish TV executive she played in Death to Smoochy.

Don’t bother with this one.  Read books about filmmaking, or watch Get Shorty again.

November 16, 2008: Saw V

OK, I admit it – I’m a sucker for this stuff.  I first encountered Saw at the Toronto International Film Festival just as “torture porn” was getting off the ground in its early 2000s go-around, and I’ve stuck with the franchise because I think the basic concept is very compelling.  The implementation in the sequels/prequels often leaves much to be desired, and if the original perpetrator is ever completely cut out of the stories in the future, then I’ll probably give up on the series.  However, for a guy who was on his death bed at the start of the first film, the villain “Jigsaw” still seems to have managed to (halfway) credibly show up in all four sequels, and not in the unexplained-undead way that Jason Voorhees clomped and slashed through a dozen or so Friday the 13th movies, when Jason was already dead even before the start of the first film.

The basic concept of the Saw movies is that ostensibly innocent people find themselves unexpectedly waking up in filthy dungeon-like conditions, and are usually forced to immediately deal with some complex mechanical trap to which the term “Rube Goldberg” clearly applies.  They must make a critical decision to keep the trap from killing them, and it usually involves some physical sacrifice from their own body, which is related to a specific indiscretion or vice their tormentor disagrees with.  Usually, the victims are somehow loosely connected.  So we’ve got moral lessons being taught in an immoral way, which provides plenty of gore, but it’s all for a reason, and who’s good and who’s bad isn’t as clear-cut as we’d like.

I may sound defensive at this point.  These films seem to have been demonized as a public lightning rod for the hatred of increasing senseless gore and violence in movies, exemplified also in the Hostel series and in numerous “groups of youths in an exotic place being chased and killed” movies such as Rest Stop or Eden Lake.  But as I say, the core idea behind the Saw films – that some self-declared moral compass is trying to teach people the value of life by having them make a sacrifice to atone for their sins, and have the chance to live and appreciate their second chance – is a good one, and one which provides plenty of material for these later films to delve into the back story and later apprentices to the master.

Now, that brings us to the current entry, Saw V, which pushes the boundaries of convoluted messes.  There’s a cop who has been pursuing the Jigsaw cases for years and becomes wrapped up a little to deeply in the latest episode.  There’s a group of 5 loosely connected potential victims who exhibit the requisite rash thinking to make the tensely-timed traps keep the torture coming at regular intervals.  And Jigsaw himself is seen in even more flashbacks than in the previous films, but still kind of making the same point as always.  Maybe we don’t need another installment in this series every Halloween.

On the other hand, this film explains more of the history of Jigsaw, as well as how he has managed to be so prolific in his work, since it’s obvious that even with fully detailed plans and traps, lots of money and time are required to put together the physical setups.  And the little twists in the histories of the characters always add something, even if the sum of the parts doesn’t quite add up to what it should be.

As can be seen, I’m conflicted about whether I like these movies or don’t like them.  For now, I’ll continue to devote an hour and a half per year to see where they go.

November 12, 2008:  Slumdog Millionaire

At this point, lots of people are familiar with Slumdog Millionaire and a large percentage of those people have heard that this movie is very good.  Many are not familiar with the plot, and they want to know whether or not to see it.

The movie is about an unlikely contestant on an Indian version of the “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” TV show, who miraculously seems to know the answers to all of the wide-ranging questions (on his way to being the titular Millionaire) despite having grown up a poor orphan on the streets of Mumbai (disparagingly known as a Slumdog).  Does he win the million dollars or does he blow it at the end?  Does he get the girl?  Who is for him and who is against him?

I would like to say that this film is predictable, because even while watching it, it really seems like it must be.  However, what it manages to do is to make any predictions irrelevant, and I think that’s what makes it successful.  Sure, we would like to see our protagonist win the million-plus rupees, but by the end we would be totally OK with him getting nothing, so it’s fine either way and it doesn’t matter.  We’d like to see him end up with the girl, but we understand that it’s a long shot and it would be completely believable if it just didn’t come together.  The authorities and the host of the show sway back and forth between believing his stories and judging him a liar, so while we don’t ultimately expect them to help him, their intent to harm becomes diminished.  All of this leads to a feel-good ending, of course, but how we get there seems far more genuine and less contrived than we usually see.  The movie is uplifting but isn’t in your face about it.

It’s also an engrossing ride.  There are a few ongoing character relationship threads (the contestant and his unending battles with his brother; an ongoing police interrogation; the woman he seeks out against all odds) which enrich our understanding of these people.  This is carefully integrated with mini-stories (some more involved than others)surrounding each of the questions our contestant needs to answer.  It’s a barrage of information with a lot of ups and downs.  It walks a very fine line and manages to keep on the correct side of that line the whole time.  This is great storytelling and moviemaking.

It occurred to me that one of the strong positive points about this film is how it leverages the undeniable power of the “Millionaire” TV show format.  The show overtook TV-viewing audiences worldwide several years ago and had people watching a game show on a nightly basis in a way that hadn’t happened (in North America, anyway) in nearly 50 years.  The dramatic arc of a contestant’s time on the show is a hemmed-in yet unpredictable story with built-in conflict and resolution, what with the exponentially escalating dollar figures ratcheting up the tension naturally, and the three “lifelines” (call a friend, 50/50, ask the audience) allowing the contestant to find an escape from seemingly impossible situations.  Kind of like the way a superhero always seems to manage to do.  All three of the lifelines are very carefully exercised in the film, forwarding the plot and furthering character relationships.

Not everyone will enjoy all of this.  The game-show focus and sometimes treacly atmosphere will turn some off.  Others will be turned away by the rough violence and heartbreaking lives of the Slumdog children as they grow up without guidance or positive influence.  However, this is a compelling film and well worth a look.

And all this comes from director Danny Boyle!?  The man who brought us Trainspotting, one of the most depressing drug addiction movies since the 1970s, and 28 Days Later, one of the most frightening of the new-style “fast zombie” movies.  But this is obviously a very personal project, and some of Boyle’s recent works (Millions) suggest that he’s moving in a more sentimental direction.  If Slumdog Millionaire is a representative example, then I’m happy for him to go that way.

November 11, 2008: The Terminator

In late 1997, during the lead-up to the release of Titanic, and through the subsequent shattering of box office records over the space of several months, I don’t think I ever really thought about James Cameron having been a well-established, A-list Hollywood director.  I can be pretty dim sometimes.  Sure, he struggled as did many a young director under the wing of Roger Corman in the early years.  Then after somehow managing to bring his vision for The Terminator to the screen in 1984, he went on to direct Aliens (huge action sequel), The Abyss (intelligent sci-fi with pioneering computer graphics effects work), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (huge action sequel instrumental in bringing digital audio to cinemas), and True Lies (huge Schwarzenegger action/comedy).  So it seems that he had some Hollywood clout, and perhaps someday I’ll sit through Titanic again to see what a decade has done to that film, and we’ll cover that story.

But right now, we’re talking about the real start to James Cameron’s Hollywood career as a writer/director, The Terminator.  Arnold Schwarzenegger was a known quantity from the 1977 documentary Pumping Iron and had seen recent success with Conan the Barbarian, but was still not a major established movie star.  That was all about to change with this movie, and despite only having 16 lines of dialogue in this performance, it kicked off a seemingly endless string of mediocre mid-to-late-1980s Schwarzenegger action flicks, with a few gems sprinkled in there.  Linda Hamilton went on to TV success in Beauty and the Beast (and was married to Cameron for several years), and Michael Biehn as the heroic Kyle Reese has made a career of playing minor characters with real integrity.

The Terminator is about a robot covered with real living flesh to make him appear human, sent back through time by “the machines” to kill the mother of the man who tries to prevent machines from taking over the world, before this man is ever born.  A regular human from the future is also sent back, trying to defy the odds and save the woman and destroy the nearly-invincible future robot.

The Terminator is a really well constructed movie, with a story that is compelling and makes sense (within the limitations of sci-fi and time travel theories) and maintains real suspense.  It’s a classic.  See it if you haven’t already.

On the production side, I need to comment on a couple of things.

1. The music.  It’s real period stuff, synthesizer licks from the mid-1980s, but even 20+ years later, it doesn’t really seem dated in the way that music from so many movies from that time does.  I think it’s because the tone of the music is exactly right, capturing the contrast between how the present-day (1984) L.A. thinks of itself as modern and maybe even futuristic, while it’s really just scummy and run-down.  This transcends the particulars of the instruments making the music.  We don’t need to demonize synthesizers.  After all, it’s not like people hate harpsichord music just because it sounds “dated”.

2. The stop-motion animation.  In the climactic scenes when the Terminator is only a robot skeleton and its Schwarzenegger-ness is all gone, the filmmaking technology of the day dictates stop-motion animation (no computer graphics yet, unless we’re talking Tron-style).  While it’s competently done, it’s a jarring reminder of the age of the movie, and every time I see these scenes, it makes me think of the perfectionist James Cameron and how his film productions tend to blow up out of proportion (most famously with Titanic) precisely because he doesn’t want anything to look out of place.  It kind of makes me glad that I can live with a looser set of standards (just take a look at the core concept behind this set of reviews).  Anyway, I think it’s jarring because all the rest of the movie is (aside from human style choices of the day – hair, clothing, cars, etc) very modern looking.  I mean, when I see Jason and the Argonauts (1963)*, I expect to see jerky stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen.  When I see an ultra-modern sci-fi film, I don’t.

This is a great movie which holds together well even nearly 25 years later, a sci-fi action classic with a body count not nearly as high (28) as you might think for a movie with killing in the title.

* OK, I admit that I’ve never actually seen Jason and the Argonauts.

November 10, 2008: Synecdoche, New York

I seem to start many of these Half-Assed Movie Reviews by saying how much I love the writer, actor or director responsible for the film about to be reviewed, and then I spend three paragraphs appearing to show off by name-dropping obscure movies that I’ve seen, when really what I’m trying to do is bring awareness to less well-known movies I enjoy.  Well, here I go again.

I love Charlie Kaufman.  Up to now he’s been the screenwriter of a few of the craziest art-house-mainstream movies of the past decade.  I have spoken before of my feeling that 1999 was a very strong movie year, and Being John Malkovich was one of the films in that year which particularly struck me.  Adaptation in 2002 gave us a taste of the circular and senseless plot lines he can weave.  Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in 2004 was a movie which seemed like it could be figured out and explained, but every time I try, I don’t quite make it.  As a first-time director now with Synecdoche, New York, we see Kaufman’s characteristic circularity manifest itself both in the uncontrolled feedback loop between the writer and the director of the play in the movie (who happen to be the same person), but also in the uncontrolled feedback loop between the writer and director of the movie in real life (who happen to be the same person – Charlie Kaufman).  By my count, that puts us four layers deep right from the start, and if we concede that there’s an autobiographical angle to the work, then Charlie Kaufman is ALL of those layers.  And that’s even before we see at least two people playing or directing the writer/director in the play in the movie.

The movie, such as it is, tells the tale of an aging theatre writer-director played by Philip Seymour Hoffman in Schenectady, New York, whose painter wife Catherine Keener finds sudden fame.  She runs off to Europe with their young daughter, apparently permanently, and he slowly falls apart and immerses himself in his work, obsessing over his magnum opus theatrical production for several decades.  Maybe.  You’d think I could at least figure this out and state it clearly, but I can’t.

(A new habit I’m trying to establish with these Half-Assed Movie Reviews is to briefly explain the plot in the way that real movie reviews do, rather than just rambling on about the careers of everyone involved in the project, so that the reader may have an idea of whether they might want to see the movie.  It’s ironic, I suppose, that this is the film for which I try to start doing this.)

The reviews for this film have varied widely, with most agreeing that this is a significant work and a good film, but it seems to fall apart for most people at some point in the runtime, tarnishing the overall product.  I’ve seen anything from two-star to five-star reviews (out of five), and I have to conclude that the rating is driven by how long the reviewer was able to hold on.  For my part, I was grinning in my seat in the theatre from the opening scenes until about 10-15 minutes before the end, which would land it around 4.5 stars from me.  My wife had it fall apart for her around the halfway point, so she would probably lean more towards 3.  I can see how the final act would ring true for some people, and result in the proclamations of greatness seen in some reviews.  I really wanted to leave the theatre and say “Now, THIS is why I watch movies!”.  And worthwhile it certainly was, and recommend it I will, and on my shelf will it go, but it missed the mark by a bit.

Of course, one of the big things critics picked up on was the question of whether Charlie Kaufman should have actually directed this film.  Spike Jonze, who handled Being John Malkovich and Adaptation, can bring some happiness and lightness into screenplays which teeter on the brink of depression, tragedy and loneliness.  Kaufman doesn’t manage that (I think he deliberately didn’t try at all), and that might be a factor in how things play out for unsuspecting viewers.  My position is that Kaufman HAD to direct this one, and he probably knew it, because to bring to this film the touch of lightness and quirkiness we associate with movies he’s written (and which any other director would feel obligated to do, if for no other reason than commercial viability) would have completely undermined its foundation.  This is not just a sad story, it is about sadness.