Half-Assed Movie Reviews

October 4, 2010:  Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps

I’ve been waiting for 23 years to see this film.  I saw the original in the theatre with a friend at the tender age of 13, and in retrospect I don’t know why at that age I would have been so eager to see a drama about 1980s family tensions and high finance.  But I’ve held Wall Street (1987) close to my heart for all these years, and no matter how bad the sequel was rumoured to be, I was going to see it.

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is a maddening mix of good and bad, which makes me unable in good conscience to recommend it to anyone, while knowing at the same time that I’d be preventing people from seeing some sequences which are real gems.  I’d classify this as being similar to other late-period Oliver Stone films such as World Trade Center (2006) and W. (2008), in that the characters are fairly simply drawn and the purpose of the film is more to make a point with the plot.  In all of these cases, real-life events are explored, but in Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, at least Stone has the benefit of previously established fictional characters who gain some greater depth by the mere fact that we’ve known them for decades.  He does take advantage of that, but the result is a jarring dichotomy between the Gordon Gekko character (played by Michael Douglas to a 1987 Oscar win and reprised here as the centrepiece of the film) or even the Bud Fox encounter (Charlie Sheen returning in a marvelous cameo), as compared with the new characters, including Shia LaBeouf as a young Wall Street up-and-comer, and Carey Mulligan as Gekko’s daughter, and even Susan Sarandon in a small role as Gekko’s ex-wife.  While Douglas can evoke a response in the viewer with a mere nod of his head or widening of his eyes, LaBeouf struggles in vain to make his character seem like anything other than a plot device as Stone condescendingly picks apart the 2008 global financial collapse as if he was the only one who saw it coming.  Even Eli Wallach, as a possibly insane or possibly prescient business patriarch, is either miscast or underutilized, which just adds to the confusing swirl of new characters.  Mind you, I have nothing against Wallach, who at age 94 is apparently still going strong, and I liked the sneaky little nod to his past, with LaBeouf’s cellphone ringtone being a clip of the iconic Ennio Morricone music from The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (1966), in which Wallach played “The Ugly”.

When the film is going through lots of fast-paced talk about complex business maneuvers and stock trading schemes, it is snappy and engrossing.  However, it bogs down in the murky and ever-changing personal relationships, because the shifts in the characters personalities don’t seem to be motivated by anything.  It seemed to me that they would change just so that the writers could play out different ideas with them in those modes.  For example, there are great scenes which could be written for Gekko as a reformed “good” guy, and there are great scenes which could be written for him as a man who is evil to the core.  Well, guess what?  We get both of those scenarios, and it’s really not clear which one he actually is or why he would shift.  Even the ending is arbitrary and confusing.

I’ve never thought that the original film was particularly well known or liked, so I was surprised to see a sequel come to light, and the confused nature of this screenplay is a good indicator that nobody quite knew how to handle it.  On one hand, lazy plot devices like pregnancy and lying to a fiancée to spark a breakup are abundant.  On the other hand, though, Douglas takes slimy to another level here with Gekko acting genuine and gaining people’s trust until he’s back on top and money dictates his actions once again.  There are some great scenes here, but they are buried under a lot of other crap.

Disappointing sequel, not without its merits.

September 21, 2010:  Redbelt

I must have seen David Mamet’s Heist (2001) too many times.  I’m looking too hard for double-crosses and intrigue in his movies now.  Redbelt (2008) was not at all what I was expecting, so I adjusted my attitude during the film, but it turned out to be much more straightforward than I was letting it be.

Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Mike Terry, who runs a struggling Jiu-Jitsu academy. His wife runs a struggling but more successful clothing design/manufacturing business.  Mike’s students include a policeman who is just about to earn his black belt.  A chance encounter with a woman who comes in off the street results in an embarrassing incident for the officer, a broken store window for Mike, and possibly a new friendship for the woman.  A chance encounter with a movie star sends Mike on a trajectory towards success, but it ends up causing trouble for the police officer whose mistake on that fateful night at the academy comes to light, and Mike ends up learning how hard it is to defend your intellectual property against people with lots of money and lawyers.

I had thought that Redbelt would be about the fighting itself, but in fact it’s much more about the interpersonal power struggles and wordplay among the main players.  Being a Mamet film, this doesn’t and shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did nonetheless.  That said, it’s probably a richer film because of it.  I won’t go into much more detail about the plot, so as not to spoil it for anyone since the movie is still fairly recent, and obscure enough that the story hasn’t been plastered all over the place in the media.  My main concern with the film is how the ending is handled, since it really doesn’t quite mesh with the rest of the film, as it moves from a very gritty and realistic progression to a much more cerebral and symbolic conclusion.  The “red belt” in question is an honorary title/belt held by just a single person at one time in the world, and it is what all students of the martial arts figuratively aim to earn, in order to keep their honour and integrity in check.  While red belts do actually exist in various martial arts, this usage of it is unique to the film.

David Mamet is a very well-known American playwright who turned out several gems in the 1970s, having transitioned into screenwriting and then turned his hand to directing within the last couple of decades, typically directing his own original screenplays.  His most well-known plays include American Buffalo, Glengarry Glen Ross, and Sexual Perversity in Chicago, which were turned into films in 1996, 1992, and 1986 (as About Last Night…) respectively.  Heist is one of my particular favourites of his films, but I was disappointed in the end results (though not the concepts) for State and Main (2000) and Spartan (2004).  Still, I’ll happily give Mamet the benefit of the doubt and see anything he puts out.

The performances are another element which always elevate a Mamet film, regardless of the flaws with the plot, and Redbelt is no exception.  A big part of this is the stellar dialogue provided for the actors.  Chiwetel Ejiofor, an underrated actor who is now really starting to get his due recognition, effortlessly carries the film with his central portrayal of Mike, an honourable man who is forced to risk his marriage, business and all friendships in order to maintain his integrity as a master of the mixed martial arts.  Emily Mortimer, a British actress who is consistently underutilized, gets to say a lot with those narrowed and expressive eyes of hers, and her character experiences real growth in this film despite fairly limited screen time.  And Tim Allen, late of the hokey Home Improvement TV series (1991-1999) and the voice of Buzz Lightyear in three Toy Story films, gives an impressive dramatic performance here as a movie star who is stuck within the system and tries to break out a bit, but finds that even with his power and money, there are still more powerful and more ambitious people who won’t let the system be violated lest it take away any of their influence.  It’s a great role for Allen and he plays it well.

I was pleased that I finally got around to seeing Redbelt, and would recommend it to anyone who won’t mind the fight scenes scattered through the film.  Great writing and performances are always worth seeing, and the plot here holds together better than some of Mamet’s weaker entries.

Snappy dialogue always saves the day.

September 15, 2010:  I Am Slave

I Am Slave is a British film which examines the modern-day first-world slave trade from the angle of a fictionalized retelling of a true story.  In real life, Mende Nazer actually went through the ordeal of being kidnapped from her tribal home in Africa and shipped to the middle east to be a servant for a wealthy family.  They threatened to kill her family if she attempted to escape.  When she proved too much trouble for the woman of the house, she was sent to live with a relative of the wealthy family in England, where she again had to work as a servant with no compensation, effectively as a slave.  While her father spent years searching for her, she tried desperately to escape, finally managing to enlist the help of a passerby who was from the same part of Africa and understood her plight.

I found myself respecting this film as I watched it, since to “enjoy” it wouldn’t be appropriate, but it didn’t hold up very well when I started to analyze it.  As a vehicle for bringing awareness to this appalling practice, it is effective, but as I’ve noted previously, I think spelling it out with an individual case doesn’t make the point as well for me as does a documentary approach detailing the massive numbers of people affected.  The filmmaking craft is competent in I Am Slave and it’s definitely a story worth telling, but the film can’t do much more than sketch a quick picture, and Wunmi Mosaku’s expressive eyes and face do the best possible job, but I have to imagine that the book contains considerably more detail and would be more rewarding.

Slick production but should be documentary.

September 11, 2010:  United 93

I must admit that the significance of the events of September 11, 2001 didn’t sink in with me immediately.  Of course, we all know now that the brazen assault on complacent and ignorant westerners, on North Americans’ own hallowed ground, would significantly though not fundamentally change the way privileged lives are lived, and not quite in the ways we might have imagined.  The charade of increased security at airports has touched many people, and the continued impact of increases in military spending in Afghanistan and Iraq has hobbled the financial capabilities of a number of countries.  Nearly a decade later, not a day goes by without a mention of that day in relation to current events.

What can be forgotten after so many years is the uncertainty, fear and confusion during that fateful day itself, and Paul Greengrass’ film United 93 (2006) does a very effective job of providing that reminder, which is why I selected it for viewing on this 9th anniversary.

World War II is the go-to war for recalling absolute earth-jarring uncertainty and despair.  One of the things I regret that I can’t perceive about that war, and which I speak about at times with my grandmother, is the difference between my perspective knowing that the war ran from 1939-1945, and her perspective living in London and suffering bombing raids for years with no end in sight.  She didn’t get to think “this sucks, but it’s 1944 so at least it will be over by next year”.  I can’t and won’t attempt to liken the events of 9/11 to WWII, but I think it helps me to get closer to understanding the sentiment.  We know now that only four planes were hijacked that day, and the World Trade Center twin towers were lost but at least the two other planes didn’t quite make it to their targets, and there haven’t been any follow-up attacks on that scale.  But on the day itself, it was clear that a disaster was unfolding and the size of it was completely unknown.

In United 93, the story is about the hijacked plane which was fated to crash land in Pennsylvania, as a result of fighting on the plane once the brave passengers, upon hearing of the day’s events and realizing that they weren’t going to emerge from this hijacking safely, tried to take matters into their own hands.  The drama aboard the plane is intercut with the unfolding events of the day, focusing on the Federal Aviation Administration command centre, a military command centre, and various air traffic control towers in the eastern US.  We see the beginnings of a normal day, with workers doing their jobs and making sure the cogs of the wheels of society turn smoothly.  When things start to go amiss, the correct lines of authority are activated according to protocol and people focus on the problem and try to figure out what’s happening.  Then things spin out of control and nobody knows what to do, and that’s where we realize that no set of pre-set procedures can effectively deal with such a significant disaster.  Once a couple of planes are confirmed to be hijacked, several more suddenly seem to be behaving in the same way, as a microscope is taken to the actions of the thousands of pilots in the air over North America at the time.  It is unknown whether it’s two planes or a hundred planes which might go amiss.  Once a plane crashes into the first tower, people are still reluctant to accept that things are out of control, as reports immediately surfaced about it being a small plane and the FAA and military staff had no better information than CNN.  Once the second tower was hit, it was clearly deliberate and drastic action needed to be taken, yet the President still could not be reached, nor could the Vice-president, and the legendary US military was still struggling to get clearance to put two or three planes over New York and Washington.  At this point, how many more planes were going to disappear?  Was this to be a daily occurrence until some demand was met?  Would other civilian transport systems or other iconic buildings be attacked?  I was watching TV for the bulk of that day, and nobody had any answers to these questions.  All they could do was to talk about them.

United 93 wisely includes footage from TV news networks in order to illustrate the above-mentioned role reversal common in such situations, where the military tunes in the news to find out what’s going on rather than being the ones giving the briefings to the networks.  This illustrates the reality of emergencies where speculation about possibilities spreads like wildfire and before long turns out to be the story everyone is reporting.  In what I think is the most poignant scene in the film, a bunch of guys in a control tower in the New York area (I think it had to be LaGuardia based on what they were able to see) are poring over their radar screens trying to figure out where a particular plane has gone, when one finally sees it with his own eyes through the huge panoramic windows and points it out and they all proceed to watch, helpless, as it crashes into the second tower.

Up on United’s flight 93, brief sketches of each inhabitant of the plane are presented, scattered through their mornings and their time in the airport and as they board the plane and begin their flight.  We see well-fed mousy men shed their day-to-day personas when everyone’s lives are on the line and they need to plan a coordinated attack on their captors and risk injury to do so.  Flight attendants stick to their “don’t worry, we’ll be landing soon” stories for as long as they can, until they gratefully begin to act human again and help to plan the counter-attack to regain control of their plane.  I think it’s a good move to structure the narrative of the film around this flight, because the whole story can be told in all its gritty detail, but there’s an intimate human element to it as well.  By using mostly unknown actors, there is also no single person acting as a focal point, allowing the viewer to appreciate the dynamic of the group as a random sampling of society, which is how life actually is.  Director Paul Greengrass was the man behind the second and third Jason Bourne films (The Bourne Supremacy from 2004 and The Bourne Ultimatum from 2007), so he knows how to put together a tense action scene and there are some in this film, but here he knows when to keep things low-key.  United 93 is as realistic a film as you’re going to see about 9/11, and a worthwhile reminder of the uncertainty of that day.

Sensitive perspective on harrowing, world-changing events.

September 9, 2010:  Kicking and Screaming

I wanted to like Kicking and Screaming.  I really did.  Having been quite a fan of Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale (2005), and having appreciated the underlying message behind this year’s Greenberg, I thought I’d go back to the beginning, in the spirit of my recent journeys into cinematic pasts, and watch Kicking and Screaming (1995).  Baumbach’s feature directorial debut, it’s about a group of recent college graduates and how they got to be the way they are.

I admittedly need to fall back on my half-assed escape here, since I clearly wasn’t paying full attention to the film.  I don’t recall what I was doing at the time, but it obviously impaired my ability to follow what was going on.  About 15 minutes in, I got confused about timelines, but it wasn’t until about 3/4 of the way through the film that I realized it was definitely going backwards.  After the opening scene at a graduation party, the film worked its way back through the years this group had spent in college, and how the friendships and relationships developed.  Now, even knowing that, I don’t think I would have been too keen on the film, for a number of reasons.  First of all, it was a little Americentric for my taste, with foreign travel being very stereotypically presented as a standard way to expand horizons, held up as an indicator of how much someone knew about the world.  Second, and I can’t necessarily fault the film for this, it depicted the classic US college lifestyle of deep heart-to-heart connections and revolving-door romantic relationships and long-lasting friendships peppered with occasional huge emotional blow-ups, which was not at all my university experience and therefore goes a long way towards destroying the realism of the film for me.  Third, while there is lots of natural conversation among the characters, admirably more “real” than in a lot of movies, at the same time it falls victim to being unfortunately not all that interesting.

I didn’t know about Kicking and Screaming at the time of its release, though to be fair it was during a time when angst-ridden youth films were a dime a dozen, with Richard Linklater’s Slacker (1991) having helped to electrify the genre and Reality Bites (1994) having taken it to a commercial high.  My generation (keep in mind that I was the right age for all of these films to have resonated with me, if I had seen anything of my own experience in them) only knows The Knack’s “My Sharona” as the song playing while Janeane Garofalo dances like a crazy person.  I can see the merits of Kicking and Screaming, but I guess I didn’t pick the right time or occasion to give it a shot.

Innovative but I didn’t pay attention.