Celluloid Heroes

Another Obligatory "Best of" List

2009-01-15T13:57:00.000-08:00

Details, superlatives, and unedited ramblings on each film forthcoming.

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Films I've yet to see that could, potentially, disrupt this list: The Pineapple Express, Man on Wire, Doubt, Synecdoche New York, Wendy and Lisa, Let The Right One In, Happy-Go-Lucky, Che, Timecrimes... presumably others.

Honorable Mentions also forthcoming.

Dead Dog Blues - the predictability and sad defeat of audience manipulation

2008-12-31T20:36:00.000-08:00

It’s probably no surprise, but I’ll be passing on the theatrical run of Marley & Me. As a devourer of cinema, fine or otherwise, I will probably end up seeing it through the diversion drainpipe that is premium cable or Netflix, but neither of these occurrences could be considered any more active than brushing my teeth or reading Entertainment Weekly. Maybe in February, when offerings are slimmer, I might have taken in a matinee, but certainly not in December. After all, I still haven’t even seen Doubt, or Revolutionary Road, or almost any other construction built almost wholly for the consummation of tiny golden statues.

It doesn’t hurt that Marley & Me also seems to be the most cynical of all endeavors. So the following rant is under the presumption that the dog dies in the end. Its an ending no more emotionally succinct than the proclamation that “air is good” or “kittens are cute”. Its invalidity in the arena of cultural politics or human discourse would almost be excusable during the holiday season, if it wasn’t coupled with the inevitable “punch you in the face” dénouement. It’s a duplicitous move, replacing sentiment with sentimentality. Imagine Chris Columbus impersonating Gaspar Noe.

It’s a shame, too. Because I like Owen Wilson, he’s always carried with him a wounded charm and vulnerability most actors, comedic or dramatic, would never attempt. Even more impressive, he does it without the burden of self-consciousness. I don’t even mind Jennifer Aniston, enough of a purveyor of stylistic currency to not fuck up roles that are even better than her qualifications (see: The Good Girl.)

So it’s not it’s components that screw up Marley & Me, but its execution. It’s glossy exploitation and it’s the inability to actually give enough credit to its characters or its audience. Death can be the most powerful device to convey the fleeting, temperamental blessing and burden of existence – it always has been. It can also be the laziest. It’s a tricky balancing act that, this year alone, almost toppled both David Fincher and Gus Van Sant (but didn’t.) And it sure as hell isn’t going to be done in Marley & Me… with the director of The Devil Wears Prada.

I actually really do want to see both Doubt and Revolutionary Road, and don’t consider them solely to be constructs of critical pandering, but I certainly don’t expect their intentions to anything less than classical drama without subversion. Not that there is anything wrong with that, of course, it just pains me that their enthusiastic receiving from critics is the complete opposite of the reception the completely deserving and dismally underrated Redbelt received earlier this year.

The Only Good Bug Is A Dead Bug

2008-10-12T17:05:00.000-07:00

“But in terms of industrial pictures, there is a picture that I think is a masterwork, and that is Starship Troopers. That, for me, is the most beautiful cowboy picture I ever seen. It's fantastic.”

-Alejandro Jodorowsky

Starship Troopers was released over a decade ago. Directed by Paul Verhoeven, whose greatest accomplishments are never boring - whether it is a failure or a success. In those ten years, I never bothered watching it. The film seemed aggressively stupid, a pain to even attempt sitting through. But again, anytime Verhoeven’s work can be prefaced by “aggressive”, it should be required viewing. Robocop still stands as a brutally violent, socially punctual satire that’s both compulsively watchable and keenly observant, taking aim at authority through barbarianism and media through passive consumerism. It rules.

Showgirls, Verhoeven’s most notorious debacle, is one of the finest, unabashedly exploitative sex films Hollywood has ever had the balls to release. It’s the Titanic of titty flicks. Robocop and Showgirls represent those dualities, success and failure, both equally enjoyable. In fact “failure” is a bit harsh, considering Showgirls carries with it no pretensions. In that regard, it succeeds in ways more Oscar-season “prestige” pictures never will. “Failure”, in the Verhoeven cannon, should probably be reserved for something like Hollow Man, an invisible man update that isn’t sleazy, brutal, or atmospheric enough to hold your attention even on late-night basic cable.

But Starship Troopers unifies Verhoeven’s filmography gloriously. It’s a tremendous film that skewers American youth culture and militarism with wild enthusiasm. A future in which a fascist government uses the school system to propagate the war agenda, sending hormone-charged teenagers to fight an unmotivated, ideological war on foreign soil. The government dangles patriotic duty and the promise of a better life in exchange for national service, kids fly to a planet infested by overgrown, murderous bugs, both are slaughtered en masse. It’s wonderful fun. Sick, hyperbolic, and with the same pointed wit at a passive media-as-infotainment culture that Verhoeven brought to Robocop.

It’s another example of the late-nineties resurgence of mainstream studios financing daring projects. Maybe it was the pre-millennial superstition that we were all going to be doomed by Y2K anyway. Most likely, it was a flourishing economy that made monetary chances seem less risky than they do now. Whatever it was, the late-nineties boom brought us Starship Troopers, Fight Club, American Beauty, Magnolia, and more. Films of disenfranchisement, loss, and rebellion. Satiric, aggressive, or introspective. I don’t know when we lost it, but we did. And now, these films are more necessary than ever before. The Dark Knight might have learned how to take style and doom and market it to a larger audience, but it doesn’t say much. It’s politics are muddled, and it’s cynical without action. It’s surprising entertainment, but it’s safe entertainment. Perhaps Starship Troopers isn’t dangerous, but it’s unfurled. Politics and exploitation, unleashed in equal measure. It also beats any of Hollywood’s latest criticisms of the Iraq War. More incisive and watchable than Stop-Loss, Lions For Lambs, or Body of Lies could ever be.

And did I mention it rules? Because it does.

Starship Troopers Shower Scene - Funny blooper videos are here

Knight Revisted

2008-09-22T12:45:00.000-07:00

Two months and three viewings later, I have come to the conclusion that I might have gotten a little carried away with the Dark Knight hyperbole. It happens.

It's still quite a good film, maybe the finest accomplishment of the summer season. A consideration still subjected to debate considering the summer also brought two other terrific achievements - Wall-E and Hellboy II: The Golden Army. The former more artistically daring, the latter much more fun.

Is it playing the same chords as No Country For Old Men? Probably not. Though, it could lead to a discussion that that film itself may very well have been just an extraordinary potboiler, a cat-and-mouse tale elevated by the breathless appropriation of forced thematic relevance. Sometimes a story, grim and merciless as it is, is just a story. Sometimes a superhero is just a superhero.

The Dark Knight

2008-07-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

By now, it has been established that Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight is Absolutely exquisite . A success, both artistic and commercial, that is both portentous and tremendously exciting. It's populist escapism that rivals most other films more blatant claims of "art". It's been compared, repeatedly, to The Godfather II. Like that film, it inhales the world that it's preceding entry created, and exhales something much larger, more complex - and justifiably considered "epic."

It's amazing what a keen-eyed director can do with a talented cast and without the burden of exposition. Batman Begins had been a decent-enough passing. A film weighed down by exposition and the demands to satisfy a franchise. It stayed well within it's confines, not failing, but not expanding. It was passable, if unsurprising. It seemed new, only in that it was the first Batman film in a decade to take itself seriously.

Dark Knight is a beast separate from it's predecessors intentions. It stands on it's own, without comparison, to any other Batman film - past or present. Closer in tone to No Country For Old Men, Heat, or The Asphalt Jungle, than a superhero film has ever been before. In fact, whatever superlatives I, or anyone else, adorn upon the film, can't even compromise the surprise of watching the final product. It's that good.

Yet, with all this ambition, all this praise - it never sinks itself. Nearing three hours, exhaustive and fleet, this is most cinematic fun you will have this summer.

I could continue, but you've read the reviews. Even the negative ones, like David Denby's in the New Yorker, are promising.

What lingers with me, right now, isn't the impending doom, the languid cloud of desperation, dread, and voice articulated so well in everyones performance, in the score, in the cinematography. It's a sense of finality that would exist even without Heath Ledger's death. It's there and it's real, well articulated, and unshakable.

What lingers is one moment, one shot. It stays not because of any connotations made outside of the film, it stays because it is strange and beautiful. Midway through the film, the Joker steals a police car, weaving down the road, leaning from the car window, taking in the air, long, deep, content in chaos. It's transcendent, and gorgeously isolated.

I'll describe it, but I don't want to post a still of it. See it - it's lovely. Absolute cinematic beauty. It shot through me sometime last night, like if it initially burrowed it's way into my consciousness, only to escape - quite vividly, later on.

I can't shake the film. I can't shake that shot. It makes my heart race thinking about it.

Death Sentence. Flirting with the Cinema of Life

2008-07-19T12:02:00.000-07:00

Death Sentence is a pretty forgettable film. It's a shame, too, because it has all the ingredients of a finely exploitive little potboiler. Another tenuous remake from the same source material Michael Winner's Death Wish had been inspired by. It's promised to be both base and ruthless - Kevin Bacon avenging the death of his son against a gang of grotesque caricatures, including an extra-sweaty John Goodman as an unscrupulous gun dealer (but aren't they all?)

The difference between what it promises and what it delivers, however, are evident from the very beginning. It deflates any sort of grindhouse charm, filling the remains with flat, unfocused melodrama. The violence has a heavily edited sheen that removes both the visceral and the profane from the proceedings. Perhaps not much of a surprise, coming from James Wan - coconspirator of the Saw series.

Once Kevin Bacon's suburbanite, businessman something-or-other makes the decision to take action, and the gangs ensuing reaction, Wan seems thoroughly intent on draining any momentum that would lead to a very thrilling, very brisk, third act in the capable hands of almost any other director.

But the film is not wholly forgettable, most of it plays like a bloodied xerox of a maudlin Lifetime drama - or the kind of film that collects dust before being wholly forgotten. Remember Eye For An Eye, starring Sally Field? Neither does anyone else. The one exception is a dizzying, surprisingly fleet sequence when Kevin Bacon is fleeing attacking gang members in a multi-level parking garage. For almost ten minutes, the film comes alive. The camera breaks from the routine, and everything feels urgent and on the cusp of salvation.

Bacon, frantic and breathless, sets of car alarms, ascending the garage floor by floor - like a rat in a cage. His aggressors are close, and their distance is fully articulated because most of the sequence is executed in one shot. From the stairwell to the rooftop, the camera becomes an unblinking observer. Eventually, the shot ends - and the scene continues. And it isn't until the scene concludes that the film goes back to it's uninspired crawl.

But for a few minutes, everything breathes. For a few minutes Wan makes a stretch of B-movie brilliance. Another example that the Cinema of Life exists everywhere.. Not just in the Oscar contenders, studio showboats, and art house darlings clogging year-end lists, essays, and books nationwide. There a moments that exist between stilted dialogue, like in John Hough's Dirty Mary Crazy Larry, where as if the film becomes a transistor, rerouting a reservoir of feeling, dark and deep - shining it brightly on screen. For a few minutes, Death Sentence and Dirty Mary Crazy Larry and Band of Outsiders all speak in the same language. Unified by image and feeling. Life and death. And, for a few minutes, it's a tremendously gratifying experience.

And then it's gone.