The Fine Cut

Love, Blood & The End of the World: The Top 10 Movies of 2011

2011-12-31T11:15:00.000-05:00

The picture above is from the Q & A after a rare screening of Sidney Lumet's "Prince of the City" before the 30th anniversary of its release. For me, this was the best movie theater experience of 2011. Alas, they do not make them like this anymore.

I still haven't seen all the movies I have wanted to see, such as "A Separation", "Poetry" and "Rampart". However, as things have worked out for yet another weak year at the movies, these actually are 10 films, as of today, that were a cut above everything else (which amounts to 34 movies total I actually watched this year), which I present to you in a rare non-Press Play post.

In alphabetical order:

Certified Copy (dir./scr.: Abbas Kiarostami)

The Descendants (dir.: Alexander Payne; scrs.: Payne, Nat Faxon & Jim Rash)

Drive (dir.: Nicolas Winding Refn; scr.: Hossein Amini)

I Saw the Devil (dir. Jee-woo Kim; scr.: Hoon-jung Park)

Margaret (dir./scr.: Kenneth Lonergan)

Melancholia (dir./scr.: Lars von Trier)

Shame (dir.: Steve McQueen; scrs.: McQueen & Abi Morgan)

Take Shelter (dir./scr.: Jeff Nichols)

13 Assassins (dir.: Takashi Miike; scr.: Daisuke Tengan)

The Yellow Sea (dir./scr.: Hong-jin Na)

DEEP FOCUS: THE RAPTURE

2011-10-25T19:45:00.000-04:00

At Indiewire's Press Play, here is my newest video essay for Michael Tolkin's great and under-seen 1991 film about critical thinking, God and the end of the world: "The Rapture". And I certainly feel this movie gets more relevant with each passing year, as well as something I hold truly close to me.The link to Indiewire is here.

LIFE’S WORK: THE FILMS OF ROMAN POLANSKI: SPACES

2011-09-27T07:45:00.000-04:00

I present to you my video essay exploring the films of Roman Polanski that emphasize confined locations starting from his student films and covering five decades. I would like to call this method editing, where watching all these Polanski films put my mind in a weird mental space, while coincidentally being made while I start the process of apartment hunting myself.

I cannot emphasize enough that, overall, my feelings about Polanski's work are all over the place including the films in the essay. But doing this gave me a better understanding of him and how he seems to feel about his surroundings.

To go to the post at Press Play, you can click here.

DEEP FOCUS: Prince of the City

2011-08-15T07:30:00.007-04:00

I am proud to present my video essay for what I consider a great film that hasn't quite gotten its due. Since it is a film which I feel I've been one of the most vocal champions for, I do hope that the essay reaches people who have never seen it before or makes them revisit. The essay also covers Sidney Lumet's other New York police corruption dramas.

The entire piece can be read here at Indiewire's PressPlay, which also includes an addendum that talks about a rare screening of the film a few weeks ago at the Film Society of Lincoln Center where both Treat Williams and the man that "Prince" is based on, Robert Leuci, in attendance.

Both parts to the video essay are presented above.

DEEP FOCUS: War Against the Machines: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

2011-06-28T21:20:00.001-04:00

So, for all those who haven't found out yet, there is a new, mostly video essay-driven blog founded by Matt Zoller Seitz, who has invited me to contribute. My first video essay marks the 20th anniversary of James Cameron's "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" in a, let's say, less-than-celebratory manner. You can see it here.

Dog Day Afternoon: A Video Essay

2011-04-17T13:45:00.014-04:00

I considered Sidney Lumet one of the great directors whose films shaped my sensibility when I was young and became interested in movies. So it was certainly a blow to me when he recently passed away. I decided a fitting tribute would be to do a video essay for one of his classic films. I had planned to tackle another one of his films later in the year, but this was one that came together quickly in the last week. I hope this essay appropriately responds to the auteurist film writers out there who did not quite give the man his due because he did not have a style that called attention to itself.

Please note that there are some SPOILERS, particularly past the 10 minute mark. Then again, if you haven't seen the movie yet, then you probably should.

Marriage is a State of Mind: Certified Copy

2011-03-21T16:00:00.004-04:00

Abbas Kiarostami's "Certified Copy" is not necessarily a puzzle film that expects you to decipher its meaning, as much as I believe, a film that states outright that relationships and marriage are often a mystery that even days, months or years of contemplation will never truly uncover its reasons for being. It is an example of a film whose interpretation often depends on the person watching it, particularly how one feels about the relationships between men and women.

For the most part, "Copy" is a two-hander between a British writer James Miller (played by William Shimell) and a nameless woman (played by Juliette Binoche). Miller is in Tuscany to give a talk about his new book which argues that there is nothing authentic in art. Every reproduction is in some way an original and every original is a reproduction. He then spends a day with Binoche's woman with no name, who owns an antique shop, though she admits she knows very little about antiques. She takes Miller out for a day where they, first, debate the ideas of his book, especially when she tries to apply his theories about art to life itself.

Throughout the course of the day, these two characters seem to step out from the movie themselves and play the parts of a couple, possibly married for 15 years, to sort out whether their feelings for one another are authentic or just merely copies.

Of course, the first question that comes to mind when watching the film is trying to determine what exactly we are watching is real or not. No matter what interpretation one brings to "Copy", there will always be some moment in the film that will negate it on logic alone. The closest logical interpretation of "Copy" I found was on an IMDB board where someone claims they solved it in a dream. (I know IMDB is not exactly the place for insights into film, but this was surprisingly smarter than their usual silliness.) According to this commenter, they believe She is the mistress of James Miller and that he is the father of her son. The characters change at the moment when James is outside the cafe on the phone, probably with his real wife. Possibly, they have been meeting semi-frequently throughout the last 15 years and acting out a game where they pretend they have met for the first time every time. In effect, their relationship is an inauthentic copy of Miller's marriage.

Yet, that interpretation still doesn't quite logically jibe with the first half of the film. If they're really playing a game with each other like this, you would get exasperated with them. There are no subtle cracks in their facades in the first half that suggest they really do know one another. One might have to accept that there is nothing logical about the world we are watching. Perhaps, Kiarostami's point is a study of the entire timeline of male/female relationships and representing it as taking place over the course of a day. There is almost a self-awareness that filmmakers themselves often present studies of life-long human behavior and emotion all within the course of a two-hour film. Films themselves are often a copy of real life, just as it is suggested in the movie when Miller says that even the original Mona Lisa was a copy of whoever was posing for that painting.

This movie is not necessarily a study of form. I have not exactly embraced movies or television that merely exists as puzzles to unravel. What truly hit me where it counts is realizing that the director may be suggesting that all relationships are, deep down, falsely idealistic copies of what we think relationships and love should be. It often takes a great deal of imagination and creativity to maintain them. As both characters begin to embrace the idea that they are a long-married couple, their behavior grows more desperate and needy. Their actions reflect a certain degree of immaturity and narcissism. Even though, they debate the ideas of Miller's book in the first half of the film, it is clear the less they know about one another, the more comfortable they are being together.

When they decide that they are married, the resentment towards one another reveals itself. Their disappointments as to what they thought they would get out of this relationship become more evident. Yet, they desperately feel the need to keep the charade going because this resentment and disappointment seems like the only comfort they have left in the world. Their lack of imagination pretty much prevents their relationship from ever expanding beyond their often petty disagreements. It perhaps is telling that her line of work is about selling someone else's "art", while he is consumed with the authenticity of other people's art as well. Neither of them are necessarily creating their own, except through the form of their relationship.

There was a part of me that felt that the film took place in a science fiction realm where these two characters would be forced to relive their entire relationship over the course of one day and, sadly, never learning from past mistakes and winding up in the same desperate place they wound up on other days. The 9:00PM train that Miller is supposed to catch is one that he was never destined to board unless he and his wife were able to make some sort of emotional progress.

I would believe how you see the film probably reflects how either hopeful or cynically you view the institution of marriage. Personally, my exposure to couples like the one in "Certified Copy" (and they are too numerous to count at this point) often makes me react the same way as I did to this couple. I often wonder if they keep playing this charade that they needed to stay together this long because there was genuine love for another at an earlier point in their lives that they are trying to cling onto. It also does not help that when they express themselves to each other about their needs, the other person clearly is not listening nor do they bother to acknowledge anything beyond what they want out of the relationship. It is not a surprise that these two characters communicate better with one another when they supposedly know each other less well in the first half of the movie.

Perhaps, their failed marriage is an inauthentic copy of their earlier healthier relationship. Their relationship also seems like a copy of all the other couple they meet when they walk around in Tuscany that range from an idealistic young couple on the day of their marriage to a very old couple, both using canes, helping each other as they walk towards their front door. Then again, we also ask ourselves which of these couples are truly authentic. Maybe, like debates about art and film, when we often argue about what is authentic, we are often prone to declaring one piece of art a true reflection of real life while dismissing other art as inauthentic or, say, bullshit.

Yet, I do wonder whether "Certified Copy" posts the same question as "Exit Through the Gift Shop" did last year. How much of our interpretation of what is true and what is false is dependent upon a self-delusional, somewhat idealistic stance that the way which we see things through our eyes is the one true interpretation, as well as the sole determination of its artistic worth? Does this also apply to how we see our own lives as well as other's lives? I may see a doomed relationship in "Certified Copy", but others might see the ending of the film as a possibility these two people are capable of working out their marriage. It is even obvious that the two people in this relationship interpret its viability in different ways. I am reminded of how the last shot of "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" can be interpreted as whether these two are trying and trying to make it work or merely repeating the same mistake over and over again.

To get back to my original point, "Certified Copy", on the surface, is a puzzle. But I do not believe that is what one needs to take from the film, as I think it would seem too easy for Kiarostami to just make us question the reality of his film, as I think he wants us to question the authenticity of others and ourselves when we step outside of the theater. After all, movies are just a copy of life itself, right?

Certified Copy was seen at the IFC Center and will soon be available on VOD.

2010: A Review in Pictures

2011-02-27T12:00:00.006-05:00

Since Oscar Day seems like the last opportunity to wrap 2010 up, I figured I would at least offer a brief review of my own. As you can probably guess, I did not think 2010 was a stellar year. In fact, the best film of last year I watched on television, not to mention I believed the third season of "Breaking Bad" probably topped most, if not all of these movies as well. There were many good films, but I cannot say that my enthusiasm level was all that high.

Even the above still is misleading, as I considered Roman Polanski's "The Ghost Writer" a very good film that was surprisingly elevated to a great film by perhaps those wanting to support a film of solid craftsmanship while overlooking some of its glaring flaws. But, still, that last shot was my favorite of the year and probably represents what I thought about the year in film in general. Interpret that as you will.

This post will cover what I considered the best movies of the year and a few questions for some of the films that stuck in mind for all the wrong reasons. Finally, I also included my best experiences watching older movies on the big screen, which were the true highlights of moviegoing in 2010. I perhaps may write about or do a video essay about films from last year sometime in the future, one of which is already being planned. But I figured this would give you a good idea of what my overall feelings about the films of 2010 since this blog went dark during a few stretches last year. Here we go:

The Best Film of 2010, By Far:

Carlos

Dir: Olivier Assayas

Scrs: Assayas, Dan Franck & Daniel Leconte

The Rest of the Top 10 (in alphabetical order):

127 Hours

Dir: Danny Boyle

Scrs: Boyle & Simon Beaufoy

Animal Kingdom

Dir & Scr: David Michôd

Another Year

Dir & Scr: Mike Leigh

Black Swan

Dir: Darren Aronofsky

Scrs: Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz & John J. McLaughlin

Mother

Dir: Joon-Ho Bong

Scrs: Bong & Eun-kyo Park

A Prophet

Dir: Jaques Audiard

Scrs: Audiard, Thomas Bidegain, Abdel Raouf Dafri & Nicolas Peufaillit

The Social Network

Dir: David Fincher

Scr: Aaron Sorkin

True Grit

Dir & Scrs: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

Winter's Bone

Dir: Debra Granik

Scrs: Granik & Anne Rosselini

The Honorable Mentions (in alphabetical order):

The American

Dir: Anton Corbijn

Scr: Rowan Joffe

Blue Valentine

Dir: Derek Cianfrance

Scrs: Cianfrance, Cami Delavigne & Joey Curtis

Dogtooth

Dir: Giorgos Lanthimos

Scrs: Lanthimos & Efthymis Filippou

Four Lions

Dir: Chris Morris

Scrs: Morris, Jesse Armstrong, Sam Bain & Simon Blackwell

The Good, The Bad, The Weird

Dir: Ji-Woon Kim

Scrs: Kim & Min-suk Kim

Never Let Me Go

Dir: Mark Romanek

Scr: Alex Garland

Please Give

Dir & Scr: Nicole Holofcener

Secret Sunshine

Dir & Scr: Chang-dong Lee

Solitary Man

Dirs: Brian Koppelman & David Levien

Scr: Koppelman

Toy Story 3

Dir: Lee Unkrich

Scr: Michael Arndt

The Documentaries (in alphabetical order):

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Dir: Banksy

Inside Job

Dir: Charles Ferguson

Scrs: Chad Beck & Adam Bolt

The Tillman Story

Dir: Amir Bar-Lev

Scr: Mark Monroe

Some Random Questions:

Did Anything Remotely Resembling Drama Actually Occur During This Movie?

The Tempest

Was There Any Scenery Left After Christian Bale and Melissa Leo Finished a Take?

The Fighter

Was This Not the Most Uneasy Mix of 70's Sitcom Plot Devices with Self-Satisfied Political Correctness?

The Kids Are All Right

How Many People Must Die to Get Two Characters to Meet?

Hereafter

Are These Filmmakers Really the Vacuous, Opportunistic Assholes They Portray Themselves As in Their Own Film?

Catfish

Did My Favorite Filmmaker of All Time Really Make Something This Ridiculous?

Shutter Island

Did the Hysterical Critical Reaction to this Film, Both Pro and Con, Illustrate Banksy's Point in "Exit Through the Gift Shop" That There is a Little Bit More Posturing Than Depth in Criticism Today? And a 2nd Question: All of That For This Movie, the Equivalent of a Mr. Brainwash Painting?!

Inception

The Best Movie Revival Experiences (in chronological order):

Red Cliff: The Complete Version (Walter Reade Theater as part of The New York Asian Film Festival)

Raging Bull (Loews Jersey Theater)

The Blues Brothers (Loews Jersey Theater)

Unforgiven (Walter Reade Theater)

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly (Walter Reade Theater)

The Seven Samurai (BAM Rose Cinemas)

Ran (BAM Rose Cinemas)

Love Streams (Walter Reade Theater)

Once Upon A Time in the West (Walter Reade Theater)

As I have stated many times, I certainly plan for the blog to be more active this year. Here is hoping 2011 will have movies worth talking about.

The Prototype of Noir: Fritz Lang's M

2011-02-20T06:30:00.004-05:00

I figured this blogathon needed a video essay, so here's something I whipped up to help a good cause. I look at how Fritz Lang's "M" is viewed as the prototype for the film noir genre.

This is my contribution to the For the Love of Film (Noir) blogathon being hosted by Ferdy on Films and the Self-Styled Siren. The blogathon has been organized for the benefit of the Film Noir Foundation, who do important work to restore and preserve the noir heritage. You can donate to the Foundation via this Paypal link.

McCabe & Mrs. Miller: A Video Essay

2011-02-07T09:30:00.002-05:00

Since we have such a slew of interesting new movies being released these days (please note I cannot write with the Sarcastica font), one of the new aspects on this blog will be video essays about movies from the past. We are about to approach the 40th anniversary of the release of Robert Altman's western "McCabe & Mrs. Miller" in June. Remember when serious movies were released in the summer?

This essay has some of my thoughts about the film when I watched it not too long ago. Please note that there are some SPOILERS, particularly past the 10 minute mark. Then again, if you haven't seen the movie yet, then you probably should.

Rumors of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

2011-01-09T16:00:00.005-05:00

Yes, it has been nearly 5 months since my last post. If you couldn't tell by some of the job solicitation included with my last couple of video essays, finding paying editing gigs had become a major priority to avoiding, um, poverty. When I was lucky enough to get a flood of work in the last quarter of 2010 which will hopefully continue, so it can fund my creative pursuits, as well as, you know, pay my rent, certain things got neglected. Also, I should add I had spent a great deal of time last year bringing a small claims action against a former employer and then trying to get the money from them when they would not pay up, which was a barrel of laughs in itself. Let's just say I finally got the money and they are now out of business. Freelancing can be brutal sometimes.

It was 2/3rds of a shitty year, though I imagine I may have been still better off than plenty others. This blog had gone dark during the busiest movie months of the year. I had to work rather some ridiculous schedules from August to December to finally become financially viable, as well as put myself in position to score more consistent work in the future during the lousy economic times we are all dealing with in one way or another.

During that time, there was also some needed reevaluation on my part as to what I want to accomplish with this blog, as well as other ambitions in my life. In other words, expect to see more of a balance of video essays and written pieces, as well as a expansion of the subject matter tackled here. Not only do I plan to feature my own work whether it be analysis of other movies or my own original pieces, but anything interesting that I find on the web that is film-related and worth discussing. I also want to talk more about the film industry as a whole and where we will be going for the next decade, particularly for independent and do-it-yourself filmmakers. At the same time, I have come to the realization that trying to write a gargantuan piece every time out will result in less from this blog. I do have to be realistic with what I want to accomplish with "The Fine Cut" and manage my time better. Written pieces will generally be more concise than they have been, hopefully without sacrificing content and substance.

I had felt like I was having to decide whether to be an editor or filmmaker or blogger, when I realize that the less I try to characterize what I do, the more interesting these different aspects of myself will become when I merge them together. And, perhaps, some of you have also noticed that the two video essays I worked on with Matt Zoller Seitz and Aaron Aradillas were not necessarily just about movies. Sometimes, I want to express myself in ways beyond simply writing reviews of new releases. I will say those video essays put a filmmaking bug in me that I had not had for a long time, which made them easily two rare highlights for me last year.

Admittedly, there may have been other factors. Sometimes, it seemed that what few movies that were worth discussing had been almost chewed out and spit up by the film blogosphere. What more can I have said about something like "The Social Network" when hundreds of film bloggers had taken a crack at it? Doing a video essay about it would have been my preference, but, with new releases, that, for the most part, is not possible. It was also an odd year when I saw many movies, but cannot admittedly admit to a whole lot of enthusiasm about most of them. I will most likely do a round-up of 2010 soon, which will cover at least what I thought about many of these films. There were plenty of quality films, but very little that blew me away.

Though, I will say one film may have made me question a great deal about criticism and forced me to rethink things about myself. Let's just say it was a "documentary" directed by someone who has never shown his face in public. In addition, it may have highlighted some issues I had with the film blogosphere that some may have noticed in my comments on other blogs. I'm not sure if I am ready to deal with that fully yet, but let's just say certain "debates" from the past year made me just want to face palm. At this point, I think you can say the name "Christopher Nolan" out loud once and film bloggers will turn into the people from "28 Days Later" infected with the rage virus. But, perhaps, that is something to go into more detail when I talk about 2010.

Starting with the redesign, think of this as a reboot, to use one of the most tired words in corporate moviemaking for something more positive. Hopefully, life and what seems like a recovering economy will allow me to keep my commitment to this blog and contribute something interesting to this thing called the internet. This blog is and will always be a learning experience, as well as something that will be flexible in content and form. Here's to the true beginning of a new decade.

Lock & Load: A Video Essay About Guns in Movies

2010-08-12T09:15:00.003-04:00

As with the last video essay I cut, I will let this one speak for itself in terms of what it is expressing. It almost seems a bit overwhelming for this to come out so soon after "The Takeaway" considering there was a bigger gap between the time I cut one and the other. The one-two punch of them makes it look like I may be working out some issues of aggression through the form of video essays, though the subject matter really dictated the form.

This is actually for a fairly brand new website (less than two months old) called Capital, a site about politics, media and culture in New York, which deserves your support regardless of where you live. "Lock & Load" is actually timed with the release of "The Expendables", which I most likely will be skipping this weekend. This did come together pretty fast in the last couple of weeks, so I am actually still trying to process this one myself. I want to thank Matt Zoller Seitz and Aaron Aradillas for bringing me on to edit this. There is a montage about 9 minutes in that most editors probably wish they could get a chance to cut.

The high quality Vimeo version is above. You can also watch this at Capital here.

Hope you find it a blast!

Razzle Dazzle: Fame Through Movies, Chapter 6: The Takeaway

2010-08-03T14:00:00.003-04:00

After a month of build-up, the chapter I cut for this series has finally been posted. Now, some of you have the answer to the question: Why the hell I was given producing credit on this series? I would prefer to let the piece speak for itself. Hopefully, everyone will engage with the ideas it presents, as I am very interested in the thoughts or discussion it may provoke. I just wanted to say a few words about what brought me here and the editing.

This started back in May when I cut my video essay on both "Bad Lieutenant" films, which received the attention of Matt Zoller Seitz. He e-mailed me and pitched the idea of cutting the final part of this series, which he, his brother Rich and Aaron Aradillas had been working on for awhile. Although he gave me the choice between this segment and the previous one, it became clear to both of us in our initial phone conversation that this segment was probably more suited to me. I must add that I still wonder how Matt made the leap from the "Bad Lieutenant" essay to this. Those who know me better than he does and my interests in both film and politics could see that this was right up my alley. As I kept telling Matt, I was confident I was the right person for this job. Also, what other editor would have seen about 90% of the movies and owned 2/3rds of them already on DVD including the great, but mostly obscure Canadian television series "The Newsroom"?

As you can now see, this segment is not only a stylistic departure from this series, but from most of Matt's previous essays. I cannot take credit for coming up with the idea, as the stylistic goals and the subject matter were provided to me. (Though, I do think back and laugh that Matt wanted me to think of the editing styles of films that I consider the most innovative of my lifetime like "JFK", "Nixon", "The Limey" and "All That Jazz". Talk about setting the bar high!) What made this such a great experience was that I was trusted to come up with how to do the piece on my own (thus, the writing credit I was given) with a list of 30+ films that all of us came up with, not to mention the nearly hundred news clips and commercials featured that I included. I cut this piece on Final Cut Pro at home just in time to celebrate the expanded definition of fair use for critical pieces. Doing this piece at home once again demonstrates that the filmmakers of the future will be doing post-production in their living rooms and bedrooms.

As a professional editor who rarely gets to cut anything interesting or artistic in his paying gigs, I can say that I am quite proud of this. "The Takeaway" employs so many of the skills I have as an editor that have long been dormant, while making me feel like a filmmaker for the first time in a long while. I hope everyone gets something out of watching this as I did making it.

Final note: Unfortunately, due to the worsening economy, work has been scarce in the freelance editing world. If anyone is looking for the guy who cut this piece to bring his abilities to their projects or knows someone who needs an editor (I strongly feel I can cut shows, documentaries, commercials, music videos and pretty much anything else), you can contact me. That info you can find at my editing website. This is about the closest thing I will have to a tip jar on this blog.

You can also view this on the Moving Image site here.

Razzle Dazzle: Fame Through Movies, Chapter 5: The Maverick

2010-07-28T07:00:00.001-04:00

You can also view this on the Moving Image site here.

I Close My Eyes, Then Drift Away: Inception

2010-07-19T08:45:00.004-04:00

(WARNING: There will be SPOILERS!!!)

Christopher Nolan's "Inception" is currently the internet film community's Rage du Jour. Continuing a battle over the merits of Nolan as a filmmaker that began two years ago with "The Dark Knight", this was also one of the few films being released in yet another barren summer movie season that was worth seeing and talking about. Anyone who knows me is probably aware now that I consider The Battle Over Nolan a low point in film discourse on the web, where both sides of the "debate" have descended into hyperbolic nonsense as if there was a victory to be won on the matter. His films are often wildly misrepresented to simply fulfill a narrative each side wants to create about his abilities as well as those who disagree with their opinions. Either Nolan is the filmmaking genius who is the heir apparent to Stanley Kubrick or he is a complete hack responsible for the downfall of motion pictures.

It is tough for me to write about "Inception", not just due to entering a two week old debate that I consider mostly rancid, but, more importantly, I am absolutely perplexed that this film has actually deserved this fervor. "Inception" inspired so little passion in me (It's the "Avatar" of the moment), which makes me wonder what its most ardent supporters and angriest detractors are getting out of building it up or tearing it down. This movie is the very definition of middling.

"Inception" is about Dom Cobb (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), who is an expert at infiltrating others' dreams. He plies his trade in Europe because he fled America when accused of killing his wife Mal (played by Marion Cotillard). When a job at the beginning of the film goes bad, Cobb is forced by a Japanese businessman named Saito (played by Ken Watanabe) to plant an idea into the owner of an energy company, Robert Fischer, (played by Cillian Murphy). A team is assembled to infiltrate the dreams, all of them bringing their specific talents: The Architect (Ellen Page), The Forger (Tom Hardy), The Chemist (Dileep Rao) and Cobb's Right Hand Man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).

Their job is to enter the subconscious of Fischer and perform an "inception", so that he will think his own father would want him to break apart his energy company after his death. Though Cobb usually performs "extractions", this job requires entering several layers of dreams within dreams. The idea has to be planted so deep that Fischer has to believe that he is the one who came up with it. Basically, think of "Inception" as a heist movie where they leave something behind rather than take anything away.

One aspect of The Battle Over Inception has been about whether Nolan is successful in conveying a dream world. I have seen a couple of bloggers proclaim that no one has dreams that require special effects such as the city that folds onto itself. Dreams are something that no filmmaker can ever quite successfully portray on film. Why? Each of our dreams are unique and formed within our own minds which are also based on our own personal experiences. We may share some of the same imagery, but none of us have a collective style to our dreams. When someone says that a folding city would never appear in anyone's dreams, I can already proclaim that is false because I have had dreams where cityscapes have shifted not unlike that. I would actually say that image is more common to my dreams than, say, the dwarves that pop up in David Lynch's dreams. In fact, I have never had a dwarf appear in my dreams, though I will not discount the possibility that it may pop up in others'. It is quite odd for anyone to proclaim whether a movie dream is truly believable just based on their own experiences.

My feeling is that the imagery of dreams is so hard to remember and capture in the medium of film that directors often tend to fill in their movie dreams with what they believe dreams should have. There is also the reality that dreams created in movies still need to fulfill the requirements of the story, something I would not necessarily penalize the films for. The dreams in Lynch's "Mulholland Drive" are shaped just enough to work emotionally, while the dreams in his "Inland Empire" resulted in three hours of tedious and repetitious wankery that is not necessarily more believable as a dream. However, let us go one layer deeper for "Inception" to get at what bothers me about the film's central notion. Do our ideas always come from our dreams?

As I would like to think of myself as a creative person, that concept does not make a great deal of sense to me. Dreams have inspired some ideas, but, for the most part, they are quite difficult to recall in specific details. Most of my ideas come from unique associations that I make while I am fully conscious. To put it simply, they generally can be described as This + That + Something Else = I've Never Seen That Before. Ideas are formed by our lives and how our brains work, which is why only a small percentage of people are capable of producing inspired ideas, while the less creative often resort to recycling the familiar. Dreams are not unique to creative people, but the imagination to process and channel concepts and thoughts into art or innovation is.

Dreams, at least mine, do not usually take any shape and they make associations that are often unpredictable, but also not feasible in the real world. That is why we spend a great deal of time trying to interpret the meaning of our dreams because they are, at heart, often illogical. This is where Christopher Nolan's concept loses me. He seems to be applying logic to something that can never contain it, which results in a movie that is often too rigid in its execution when it needed to be a lot more trippy or just plain batshit insane.

Admittedly, those were my expectations about a movie that is about a heist of the mind. Instead, what "Inception" becomes throughout its running time is a James Bond/Mission: Impossible movie, which is not good for someone who generally finds those type of films rather dull. The literal-minded James Bond aesthetic, in particular, represents the polar opposite of the unattainable life of the mind that is Nolan's premise. When your dream movie contains ski shootout sequences that have plagued James Bond movies for decades, perhaps those dreams needed a bigger dose of the surreal.

Do not get me wrong. I certainly did not hate "Inception", nor was I ever bored during its two and a half hour running time. As a James Bond movie with a team played by very good actors, there is an undeniable entertainment value in watching an action movie built around the idea of entering another's dreams. Despite the many accusations leveled at Nolan's directing ability and his relentless pacing, with a few obvious exceptions, I do not usually have that difficult time following his movies nor do I mind the editing choices. I do think he is lacking a bit in conceiving action sequences, but I find the claims about his technical expertise a bit odd when there have been so many more obvious examples of completely sub-standard filmmaking technique that generally gets let off the hook like J.J. Abrams' atrocious "Star Trek", Michael Bay's entire oeuvre or George Lucas' green screen addictions in the Star Wars prequels or the last Indiana Jones film.

While entertaining on a superficial level and as an intellectual exercise in puzzle-solving, "Inception" is a bit of a botch in its lack of any big ideas and, more importantly, emotional payoff. The complexity of entering other peoples' dreams requires possibly the biggest deluge of exposition I have experienced in a film for some time. Nearly every scene in the first half of the film explains and explains and explains, inventing rules and then tossing them aside for newer rules which also get explained again and again. Even during the more action-oriented second half of the movie, the characters provide running commentary, as newer rules get explained. One of the funniest lines is when Ellen Page asks a couple of levels down in the dream world, "Whose subconscious are we entering now?" because even she got lost in all the exposition.

The bigger problem with "Inception" is that Nolan treats the emotional content the same way, which made me feel that the movie was built on nothing but plot. In the dream world, Cobb is still attempting to deal with his mad dead wife, who keeps showing up trying to foil his missions. This actually is an intriguing idea and could have pushed the film closer to noir, where Nolan took "The Dark Knight" quite successfully. Instead, it is just another piece of the puzzle wrapped within an action extravaganza. When Cobb and Mal talk to one another, these scenes are not written with any sense of drama as they merely announce their emotions to each other the same exact way the exposition is handled.

As much as I generally like Nolan's films, any notion that he is the second coming of Stanley Kubrick should be dispelled with this film. Do you want to know who Nolan actually reminds me of in both his strengths and weaknesses? Wes Anderson. I know there will be many out there, who like one and hate the other and can never conceive they are made from similar molds. But I believe they are. While Wes Anderson fusses over the background of his shots and stories, Nolan over-thinks the foreground and does not mind the surroundings as much as he should. Both Nolan and Anderson, at their worst, forget to build their scenes dramatically, which often results in characters blurting out their emotions or revelations in a way that feels completely unearned. Both directors seem so tightly wound emotionally and would rather reveal their fetish for either knick-knacks or gadgetry rather than let out any of the personal fetishes that Stanley Kubrick or Alfred Hitchcock, often falsely accused of being cold, allowed to be revealed in their films. Though Anderson makes generally comedic films, there are times when I think both he and Nolan seem to approach humor as if touching a hot stove, telling concepts of jokes rather than the jokes themselves. Neither of these filmmakers would ever be considered candidates to be the second coming of John Cassavetes. Raw emotion is something meant to be buried way, way underneath.

Yet, Christopher Nolan needed to loosen up his collar on "Inception" and find the humor and playfulness that can come from this odd group of under-developed personalities entering other people's dreams, though Tom Hardy's Eames comes closest to having any fun doing his job. The film seems to feel too ashamed to embrace itself as a caper, so it is weighted down with the same crazy dead wife story device that DiCaprio has already tackled in both "Shutter Island" and even the very end of "Revolutionary Road". Is there any insight into this relationship or is it merely supposed to supply the "depth" to make this movie Serious with a capital S? What does it say when the final shot of the movie leaves you with the question whether Cobb is still in a dream state and my reaction to it was that it did not matter one way or the other?

Perhaps, it is time for Nolan to come to terms with the notion that he is not really meant to be a director of the big-budget action extravaganzas. As much as I like his Batman films, they meant more to me because of the characters and the moral dilemmas they raised rather than the action sequences. While I am not necessarily complaining about Nolan's directorial chops as an action filmmaker, what I feel he is lacking most is in the conception department. The very idea of "Inception" requires action sequences that needed a dose of the absurd rather than the functional chase and shootout stuff that dominates the movie. While the filmmaking style of "The Matrix" has been recycled to death, the Wachowski Brothers knew how to construct their set pieces employing the flexibility of reality in their world. Or think of the sequence in Alex Proyas' "Dark City" where Murdoch is chased by the Strangers while the city shape-shifts around them.

The only time "Inception" truly approaches a level of visual wit is during the sequences where Joseph Gordon-Levitt battles henchmen in a hallway that has no gravity. It is the only time Nolan lets loose on an action sequence, nearly turning it into a violent dance number. Most of the other action seems plodding and standard with extensive shootouts, where he seems unable to embrace the possibilities of creating elaborate action choreography to suit the world he created. I kept asking myself why we needed to go through this elaborate build-up just to end up watching people shoot one another while on skis.

I cannot help but think "Inception" was a missed opportunity for Nolan. I do not know what it says when his in-between-Batman projects like this and "The Prestige" come across more impersonal and more reliant on narrative trickery than the ones he does strictly for the studios. Perhaps, it is more telling when these two movies are the ones most reliant on science fiction, as Nolan does not comes across as a director who embraces the fantastic, as much as he seems more suited to grounding the semi-outlandish in a real world setting. That quality is why I consider his terrific Batman films more successful than the over-designed world of Tim Burton's films. Nolan, at his heart, is as much of a noir/crime director as Michael Mann. He is best when setting up moral choices for his characters that can never quite be reduced to right or wrong. Dipping his toe into the land of science fiction makes him come across as more leaden and flat-footed because there is a ceiling to his imagination. That is not an insult, as most directors do not have the ability to go there. If I were choosing a director for fantasy or science fiction, I would choose the likes of Guillermo del Toro or Steven Spielberg over Martin Scorsese or David Fincher. Some people have the feel for it, while a director like Nolan does not.

One wonders why Nolan never attempts to address the issue of invading someone else's mind as a moral issue in this movie. In fact, he seems so caught up in the mechanics of the plot to develop any larger theme about dreams and the ideas contained in our mind. For a movie that proposes itself to be a thinking man's blockbuster, did "Inception" ever have anything to say beyond telling us to not hold onto the memories of our past? That is not exactly a groundbreaking revelation, considering how many films feature men being haunted by their dead wives. Nolan needed to show us the life of the mind, as John Goodman said in "Barton Fink". Instead, he introduces a fascinating concept and shows ambivalence towards exploring its implications.

Despite the fact that I was clearly not enthralled by the film, I wish "Inception" as well as any other movie can be discussed without it turning into a referendum on the career of a filmmaker. This also happened early in the year with "Shutter Island" and "Avatar". As usual when the internet decides to collectively lose their shit over a film, whether it be critics or the deluded man-children who populate comments sections, the actual film seems to be the last thing that ever gets discussed.

That was the most surprising factor when I walked out of theater at the end of "Inception". I asked myself, "THIS was the movie that inspired such nonsense for the last two weeks?" I can understand a more impassioned debate over Charlie Kaufman mind-benders "Synecdoche, New York" or "Eternal Sunshine of the Mind", which even their detractors would admit have emotional content to debate on top of their plot construction. Nolan's film is a trifle by comparison. Its reaches towards depth seem so half-hearted. Much like Robert Fischer at the end of "Inception", most of what I had experienced dissipated from memory. Unfortunately, for Nolan, the inception that there was a truly mind-blowing thought to be found in his movie outside of the plot never took in my mind.

"Inception" was viewed in IMAX at the AMC Loews Lincoln Square.

Razzle Dazzle: Fame Through Movies, Chapter 4: The Parasite

2010-07-15T10:15:00.000-04:00

You can also view this on the Moving Image site here.

Razzle Dazzle: Fame Through Movies, Chapter 3: The Fraud

2010-07-08T10:45:00.001-04:00

You can also view this on the Moving Image site here.

Razzle Dazzle: Fame Through Movies, Chapter 2: The Hero

2010-06-30T09:50:00.001-04:00

You can also view this on the Moving Image site here.

Razzle Dazzle: Fame Through Movies, Chapter 1: The Pitch

2010-06-30T09:45:00.004-04:00

Here is the first part of a video essay series I was involved with (and was credited as a producer) for the Museum of the Moving Image. Hopefully, this, as well as some personal issues I will not get into here, will explain my lack of posting in the last month or so.

I actually cut chapter 6, which I will write a more detailed post here about how I got recruited for this project when it goes live on the Moving Image site in about a week and a half. I am quite proud to be part of this and feel the entire series turned out fantastic.

You can also view this on the Moving Image site here.

The First Year Report...in 3D!

2010-05-14T11:30:00.010-04:00

One year ago today, I started this blog. 45 posts later, I realize that I might have something worth continuing and never imagined the incredible support I would get from readers, as well as terrific bloggers like Craig Simpson, Jason Bellamy, Ed Howard amongst others (please visit all of the blogs listed on the right side of this page) who usually comment here. That there are people out there reading my words and the possibility that they provoke thoughts and ideas satisfies me more than anything else about this blog. As I always say, I never expect anyone to agree with me, as much as I want to encourage everyone to bring ideas and arguments to the table. You can read any of the comments on any given post and be amazed at the lack of trolling and juvenile behavior that plague so many movie sites.

I will also admit that I did get an additional morale boost last month when someone we all read decided to use his status to bring attention to smaller film blogs including mine, for which I am eternally grateful. It always encourages me when someone I respect and, in this case, idolize, reads what I write and does not think I am completely off my rocker. I do hope to further evolve this blog to see what else I can get away with. I have some pieces cooking for the future, as well as some interesting projects elsewhere that may be featured here, one of which I am particularly excited about.

I can tell you that there will definitely be an increase in video pieces like the one I did for the two "Bad Lieutenant" films. I am an editor, so that should not come as a surprise. It is my belief that video essays will play more of a part in the future of film discussion on the internet, so I want to encourage this by contributing some of my own. I also plan to start doing more television posts, as there is much more to be discussed about a show like "Breaking Bad" than anything Hollywood plans to release this summer.

This blog will also discuss any interesting projects I work on as an editor, if the circumstances allow, as I would like to write more about the different crafts in both film and television. The first year of this blog definitely skewed towards more traditional written reviews of newer films, but I do promise there will be more older films to be the subject of written or video pieces, whether I am watching them for the first time or revisiting a classic or less-than-classic. Once again, if Hollywood continues to release what they're putting out now, I plan to largely ignore those movies and talk about something more interesting. That's why I enjoy the freedom of blogging.

Finally, I would like to thank everyone who reads this blog and hope all of you come back for more in year two of this endeavor. I cannot express enough how much I am encouraged by those willing to spend the time reading my words.

Memories of the Turn of the Century in Film, Part IV: 2006/2007

2010-05-10T09:30:00.037-04:00

The fourth part of this series about the 00's takes a precarious turn into the discussion of films while focusing on the years 2006 and 2007, which produced many films that were more than worthy of debate. These two years, for me, represented the creative peak of the decade with some of our best filmmakers releasing their greatest works. As I briefly mentioned at the end of the last part, I had decided what the subjects each part of this series would be at the beginning of this year. I have written about the state of the filmmaking community coming out of the 1990's, the deterioration in behavior of movie audiences and, in the previous part, how we have redefined what film is in the digital age. So, of course, one unavoidable topic is how the discussion of films has changed. The 00's was the decade when film criticism moved almost entirely to the internet.

Why do I approach this with some trepidation? First off, it seems like every other day, a new piece about the death of film criticism (let's call this DOFC, for short, from this point on) gets written, as well as the inevitable and sometimes angry rebuttals. A lot of this debate centers around the fact that many film critics are losing their jobs, which makes this subject even more touchy. Another thing is that critics have become increasingly thin-skinned with regards to, um, criticism. To make delving into this subject more of a losing proposition on my part, I am one of those amateur bloggers often described in DOFC articles whenever critics want to dismiss the idea that any asshole can open up a blogspot account and be taken seriously when writing about movies.

Let me start off with a few statements before I, as an asshole with a blogspot account, go down this path, some which I have articulated when I first started this blog a year ago. I have no interest in becoming a paid film critic. I prefer to make a living with what I do now and, to be honest, I cannot imagine even paying my bills writing about movies. I would never even refer to myself as a critic, as the term narrowly defines what I am trying to accomplish with this blog. So, I do not exactly I have any personal stake in this when I discuss this, as I am tackling this more from a reader's point of view. I now ask that you forgive me for what I have to do now.

I want to kill film criticism, as we have defined it for so long.

Now that I have everyone's attention, let us remember what film criticism was before the internet became so prominent in our lives. When I was growing up, my exposure to film criticism were reviews in the local newspapers and watching Siskel & Ebert on television. In college, I became more exposed to critics who wrote for weekly or monthly magazines. As someone who was actually seeking this out at the time, I look back and think about what limited exposure to different points of view I had back then. While there were certainly great writers who produced some insightful criticism back then, the form of the movie review, for the most part, was generally the same. Siskel & Ebert were seen as the most groundbreaking simply because they brought what was previously reserved on the page to television, where many tuned in to watch them discuss or fight over movies.

Obviously, the internet saw its first film sites in the 1990's, most notably with the likes of Ain't It Cool News and its ilk. Over time, considering how movies were being geared towards younger people, the discussion of film began to shift from print to the web. Of course, this has been the source of much animosity between those who started their careers in print to a newer wave of film writers and critics whose careers were defined only by their work on the web. If you thought that the Pauline Kael/Andrew Sarris feud from way back was rough, then imagine that multiplied several times over, as we now have regular tussles not only between the print and web critics, but amongst all the different factions of writers on the web. You see, the internet allowed everyone to debate more freely. At the same time, many film writers felt the need to battle each other in public (mostly in their articles, but now often on Twitter) without offering anything enlightening for those not interested in the inside baseball perspective of Film Critic Land. They often felt the need to form little gangs of groupthink in public debates and recreated the opening of "Gangs of New York" but with words instead of clubs. There are the bitter print guys in one corner and the fanboy websites in another corner. There are those who write their own blogs for no money also getting into the fray. Serious film critics band together to fight critics they consider frivolous. These are even broad strokes, as giant factions break into smaller factions and then alliances shift. Perhaps, it is less like "Gangs of New York" than the television show "Oz".

From my perspective, I have a real difficult time siding with anyone on this. As much as I certainly respect much of the film criticism I have read in print, I cannot wholeheartedly agree that it was superior in every way. In fact, I generally believe that the notion of the superiority of all modern print journalism has been a bit of a myth over the last couple of decades. Back in the day, there certainly was more attention paid to fact checking and hard news. But, over time, the corporations that owned the newspapers began to show their influence on the type of news being presented. Important stories were ignored, while gossipy nonsense was given front page credibility. Newspapers were competing with 24 hour cable news, which had its own share of dubious journalistic practices. Anyone with an ability for critical thinking would start to consider that perhaps the news we read and saw was compromised a bit.

As far as the superiority of print film criticism is concerned, we have to remember that critics like Rex Reed or Armond White have been employed in print for the entirety of their careers. White, in particular, seems to have a problem with coherent sentence construction that you would think someone with his "experience" should have mastered by now. We also have to acknowledge that the more we define criticism as merely reviews that tell us whether we should see a movie or not, the less open we are to the possibilities of discussing movies in the 21st century. Intelligent articles about movies used to be written on typewriters and now they will be conceived on iPads. It is about the intelligence the writer brings to the table.

Some may take this as a cheap shot against print critics especially when they are losing their jobs. That is not the case. I certainly have a great deal of empathy towards anyone in any profession losing their jobs. However, what I do resent a bit have been the endless DOFC articles, simply because they come across as more than a bit narcissistic and self-pitying. The economy is bad for everyone. It has been a struggle for myself to find employment in the last year and a half in my line of work. The thing is that hardly anyone in any other profession has the forum to complain so publicly and frequently about their misfortunes. While I may consider writing about film important, in the big picture, most people perceive getting paid and writing about film to be a relatively privileged gig even if we all know it does not pay that well. (Thanks to DOFC articles, some over-sharing freelance critics have revealed how much they get paid per review.) The reality is there is going to be a ceiling of empathy for whatever critics lose their jobs, as brutal as that may seem.

What I do not get is the hostility directed by print critics at those who write on the internet. Even more so, I do not understand the further derision by those employed by movie sites at those who open up a blog account and write about movies for free. The phrase you often hear is, "On the internet, anybody can be a critic." Yes, the internet has changed film criticism as we know it. Like everything else, it needed to evolve despite that many critics have responded to this with a great deal of kicking and screaming. What employed critics and writers do not seem to understand is what their place is in the big picture. I had mentioned earlier how newspapers and 24 hour cable news became more compromised in their journalistic practices because they ultimately served corporations. In the aftermath of the bullshit we were being fed on a daily basis culminating in the cheerleading news coverage that led to the invasion in Iraq during early 2003, we saw sites popping up on the internet whose main purpose was to fact check the national newspapers and cable news channels. While I am aware that every news site carries its own bias even on the web, I can also say that the ability to read more sources and understand more points of view on the internet has resulted in me becoming a better informed person. I may have more bullshit to sift through, but I feel I can figure out a closer approximation of the truth, as opposed to depending on a couple of my local journalistically compromised newspapers. A system of genuine checks and balances is a good thing, is it not? So why not consider that the more independent voices out there are needed to counterbalance, say, the mostly useless softball reviews from movie sites that greeted a mediocrity like "Avatar"?

Roger Ebert recently wrote an article calling our present time the golden age of film criticism and I suggest you read it, as I am going to make some of the same points as well. Reading pieces about film on the web has opened up so many possibilities about criticism if you are open to redefining what it means. I can honestly say some of the most groundbreaking and thoughtful criticism has come from those who created their blogs from scratch and who are not paid a dime. They do it not just for the love of film, but the idea that they are worth discussing and thinking about. These are writers with no restrictions on the lengths of their articles and are free to express any opinion they feel without any editorial hand. They are not restricted to writing about whatever Hollywood dictates to be released each Friday. They could write about older movies or devote articles to certain aspects of the filmmaking craft or a filmmaker's recurring themes. Of course, as with any art form, there is a great deal of sludge to get through to read the great stuff, but the best writing is some of the most intelligent I have read. Click on any of the links on the right side of the page. Then click on the blogs they link to and tell me that these writers are not serious about their passions and their craft.

The internet has democratized the voices we consider when thinking about movies. One would think that the internet is a medium that gets more people to embrace the act of reading involving and challenging pieces would make every critic embrace it. We have to move on from believing that writing about film is merely expressing an opinion. That is why I never refer to myself as a critic or even embrace the term "film criticism" that much. Just because someone has a paid gig spouting opinions about film does not mean they know a whole lot. I am sure some will counter than getting a degree in film studies or filmmaking qualifies certain critics to write about it, but I can tell you from first hand observation that when I went to NYU in the early '90's it was very possible for someone to get a degree in film or cinema studies and know very little about it.

You gain a knowledge about film by watching them, opening your mind to its possibilities and thinking critically about what is projected on the screen as well as outside of the movie theater. As Charlie (voiced by Martin Scorsese) says at the beginning of "Mean Streets", "You do it in the streets. You do it at home. The rest is bullshit and you know it." I do not seek writing about film that reaffirms my opinions, as much as pieces that make me think and especially demonstrate the ability of the writer to make their argument. It is about what you say, but just as important, how you say it. I also believe the writers who always show a willingness to learn and explore, as opposed to those who present themselves as all knowing bordering on dictatorial, are often more persuasive.

What may bother some about where film criticism is going is that the internet forces this to be a discussion via the comments sections. Some may use this aspect as an easy way to bash what film discourse on the web represents. I will be honest that I believe much of it is pretty deplorable. I am not going to sugarcoat this. Take a look at the discussion boards on Ain't It Cool News, CHUD, Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB or whatever other sites like these and, 95% of the time, they are populated by illiterates with serious arrested development problems hiding behind fake names to say things they would normally be punched in the face for in real life. I would add that I believe the quality of writing on those sites or, in the case of Rotten Tomatoes, a site built on the idea of critical consensus, will attract human sludge. But there are plenty of intelligent, if sometimes heated, discussions to be had on movie blogs online and it is usually where the most thoughtful writing can be found. By now, we know how the AICN and Rotten Tomatoes-like idiots operate and we can just simply ignore them instead of letting them define what discourse can be. They are the Teabaggers of the online movie world and represent the unserious of our society. I believe in the First Amendment and think they have the right to say what they say. I also have the right to mock them openly, dismiss them as overgrown children and then completely ignore them. Meanwhile, the rest of us adults can talk in the next room and get something accomplished.

There are plenty out there who are passionate about the movies or any other aspect of our culture. We have the technology to make it easier not to just communicate easier with one another, but to share ideas. Although I reiterate that I understand that film critics are facing hard times (something that I nor probably anyone else can offer any solutions for here), what is important to me is that the discussion of movies continues to live and that the smart people out there work to have a better discourse whether we are talking about movies on the web or, you know, in a bar, on the phone, or a few people on a street corner.

So, yes, I think we need to kill film criticism as how we defined it, so that we can expand how and what we think about when we talk about the movies. If we have redefined what films are and how we watch or make them, then it is not asking much that the institution of film criticism and discussion evolve itself. And, with that, I have performed my voodoo ceremony for film criticism to rise from the dead and become something else, so that I hopefully will never have to bring up this subject again (except when you see how it ties into the final part of this series) and we can continue talking about the movies.

In terms of the quality of films, the years 2006 and 2007 were the pair of years I was most looking forward to writing about in this series. It represented a reawakening for some of our filmmakers, as well as some of the more searing commentaries on American culture in the decade, often with stories set during different periods in our history and using them to comment on the world we live in today.

(In Order of Release Date in US, if applicable)

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (dir. Park Chan-Wook, scrs. Park & Seo-Gyeong Jeong) (released April 28, 2006)

Of course, I was going to include the final part of this brilliant trilogy in this series, as I did the others. I will say again that it was quite an achievement for Park to have three different takes on the same theme without ever once feeling any movie in the trilogy was a retread of the other. This film actually presents the central character, Geum-ja Lee (played by Yeong-ae Lee), as the most justified of all Park's protagonists, but does not withhold any examination of the morals behind her vengeance. Framed many years back for taking part in the murder of a child, Lee is released from prison and plots to kill the English teacher Mr. Baek (played by Min-Sik Choi) who forced her to take part in it. Not only that, she loses her daughter, who she gives birth to while incarcerated.

This set-up is not all that far removed from "Kill Bill", but what sets this film apart is that Park turns around our feelings about Lee's revenge. Her actions, particularly the gruesome final half-hour when she involves the parents of other children Mr. Baek killed in an elaborate ceremony of vengeance, also call attention to how disturbing this entire plot is. It feels as if Park wants to let us know that even in the circumstances where the deck is stacked in your favor morally, revenge is not something that will ever truly bring satisfaction.

This is the most sensual of Park Chan-Wook's trilogy, from its beautiful opening credits scored with baroque music to its final moments staged amidst lightly falling snow. Images from this film will stick with me for a long time.

United 93 (dir. & scr. Paul Greengrass) (released April 28, 2006)

Though it was often characterized as the first film about the events on September 11th, as one of the few who saw "Bloody Sunday" before this, I always felt both films were companion pieces to each other. Greengrass resists editorializing directly on events. (Though he does call attention to how those in the lower rungs like the air traffic supervisor assume leadership when those higher up seem to have gone missing.) What he does brilliantly and, I admit, with a certain level of discomfort, is recall the anxiety of the unknown that day. Usually, most films that recall a true-life past event tend to shape the material in a way that suggests the unexpected was inevitable.

This is a movie about different people trying to find out what is happening and, for those on the plane, trying to figure out what to do about it. Many of us have forgotten the confusion we all felt that day. The last half hour of the film is particularly unrelenting in its tension. It chooses not to present the actions of the passengers on the plane as some act of patriotic heroics, but more like a group of people relying on their survival instincts to make one seemingly futile attempt to overtake the terrorists and regain control of the plane. The final shot of the film when the ground is seen coming closer and closer in the cockpit window left me speechless when I walked out of the theater.

There have been complaints about Greengrass' directorial style, but there was never any moment in this film where I did not lose sense of the cinematic space or was confused by the quick-paced editing. I certainly understand why many approached the film with trepidation or avoided it altogether, but I believe it does more justice to the events of that day without reducing it to the pop culture reference, as it has been so many times since then.

The Proposition (dir. John Hillcoat, scr. Nick Cave) (released May 5, 2006)

This brutal Australian western was one of the more overlooked films of the decade. Scripted by musician Nick Cave, it has such an elegant structure and explores what may seem like cliched ideas about family and violence and turns them into intriguing moral quandaries. There is a no-bullshit feel to the entire film. Violence is often quick and ugly. Dialogue is spare. The widescreen imagery refuses to prettify the landscapes too much. The characters, at one point or another, reveal their most violent tendencies whether acting on their own or through others.

At its heart, it is about gang of criminals comprised of three brothers. Little information is delivered about their relationships with one another, but the gestures and body language reveal so much. Danny Huston's work as Arthur Burns is truly chilling, while Guy Pearce does so much with so little. John Hurt has two memorable scenes and makes the most of both of them. In addition to his fine screenplay, Nick Cave also delivers one of the more original scores for a western. The final scene is haunting, as you feel that sometimes the only ones who can stop dangerous people are those from their own family. I have a feeling that "The Proposition" may be one of those cult films that will gain in reputation as years go on before it is accepted as some kind of classic for its genre.

Letters from Iwo Jima (dir. Clint Eastwood, scr. Iris Yamashita) (released December 20, 2006)

I know that year-end Oscar-bait Clint Eastwood films have invited plenty of snarky comments, but "Iwo Jima" actually did fully deserve its praise. Though meant to complement Eastwood's other Iwo Jima film, the forgettable "Flags of Our Fathers", this one holds up on its own. I still find it fascinating that one of the most iconic American directors chose to tackle the Japanese side of the story. It helps alleviate some of the sentimentality that creeps into war movies when a director tells a story from his own side of the war. Eastwood's film treats the characters simply trying to do a job that most of them do not believe in.

There is also an intimacy to this story. The battle scenes are not turned into large-scale set pieces and nearly the entirety of the movie takes place with soldiers holed up in caves, occasionally making dangerous trips outside. From early on, you can read on the soldiers' faces that this will be a losing battle. One of the more memorable scenes involves several of the soldiers exploding themselves with grenades when they realize they lost a strategic area. More so than most other war films, it makes you question what it was all worth.

Not enough credit has been given to Ken Watanabe, who plays General Kuribayashi. I find it fascinating to see a character who does not believe in fighting the war, but still does so effectively out of loyalty to his country. Watanabe's final moments as he tries to die with some honor skirt with sentimentality but just narrowly avoid it. Whenever I watch this, I tend to forget Eastwood directed it, which makes me wonder why he keeps releasing year-end movies that constantly tout their own importance when "Iwo Jima" shows that his directing style can be quietly effective.

Children of Men (dir. Alfonso Cuaron, scrs. Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus & Hawk Ostby) (released December 26, 2006)

The first aspect anyone talks about "Children of Men" is the virtuoso filmmaking, which, without a doubt, blows me away with every viewing. A thinking person's action movie, large sections of the film are told by Cuaron's favored long takes, sometimes with the aid of nearly invisible CGI manipulation. What I believe is more of an achievement is that this is one of the more pure examples of what true visual storytelling is all about, something that has been missing from 21st century cinema. What Cuaron does so effectively is show the world that these characters live in and then force the audience to pay attention to the details in every shot. Movies today drive me crazy alternating between stretches of visual noise and clunky exposition. Every shot in Cuaron's film matters.

Beyond the filmmaking, I have to admit that its depiction of both the authoritative government and the self-defeating terrorist groups resorting to non-constructive tactics was one of the more spot-on takes on 21st century discourse. It is Clive Owen's Theo, who has become disillusioned and apolitical who emerges at the reluctant everyman hero of the film. He is the only person who seems remotely concerned about the pregnant girl's health and safety. One of the running visual cues in the film has every animal from kittens to a deer drawn to him as if he were the last reasonable man on the planet.

This is one of the more immediate futuristic films. It is not hard to imagine the world imploding as in the film, if say, we continued with the self-destructive and nihilistic mentality of the Bush years. Yet, it is a movie that is not just of its time, as I believe it takes only a few missteps to wind up at a place where we are locking refugees up in camps. Or, I guess, we can just go to Arizona right now to see this happen.

Pan's Labyrinth (dir. & scr. Guillermo del Toro) (released December 29, 2006)

"Labyrinth" is the spiritual successor to "The Devil's Backbone", but this was the film that let the imagination of Guillermo del Toro run completely free, which perfectly suits the subject matter. The story of a young girl, Ofelia (played by Ivana Baquero) living in fascist Spain years after the Spanish Civil War, it is about the true nature of rebellion whether it be through action or guided by the life of the mind. Del Toro suggests that the act of rebelling is inherent in children and should be encouraged throughout their lives, as opposed to adults, who seem either too beaten down by the circumstances to stand up for what they believe in or who turn into power-hungry bullies like Sergi Lopez's Captain Vidal.

Guillermo del Toro is an odd case as a director. When you feel that he is passionate about the material without being forced to cave in to Hollywood demands, there is rarely a director more visually assured and in control of his storytelling. Like Peter Jackson, del Toro has such an affinity for the creation of memorable creatures which he then treats with the same care as his human characters. Though his fables are about children, he chooses to tell stories about kids forced to grow up under trying circumstances. Like another movie I will talk about, it ends with one child sacrificing themselves for a younger child. Somehow, amongst all the cruelties of the world, a young girl maintains her morality and spirit, choosing not to let her fascist stepfather dictate her existence.

Black Friday (dir. & scr. Anurag Kashyap) (released February 9, 2007)

Every now and then, I want to bring some attention to a movie that I am sure few have heard much about. In fact, I believe the only reason I heard about was when Matt Zoller Seitz named it the best film of 2007. Since I cannot imagine this movie is that widely available (the Netflix DVD I watched it on looked a couple steps above bootleg quality), you can watch the entire movie on Hulu right here. This is about a 1993 bombing in Bombay and the investigation into finding all the conspirators. It turns into a procedural though told with a very alive sense of filmmaking, reminding me of Michael Mann's approach in his best films.

Then, about halfway through, the movie changes direction and reveals not only how the terrorists pulled off the bombing, but the motivations of its main architect, who had injustices carried out against his village. The movie is effective in showing the two perspectives to this event, while not shying away how both sides of this conflict result in violent attacks that leave many killed. It is one of the more fascinating films directly about the mindset of terrorism, as well as the fervor that results from trying to bring them to justice. It basically lays out a messy cross-section of motives and counter-motives, in which neither side is willing to give.

Zodiac (dir. David Fincher, scr. James Vanderbilt) (released March 2, 2007)

The viewing experience of "Zodiac" has been described as being inside a file cabinet, which probably best illustrates why I love the film so much. This film goes through every exhaustive detail in the investigation of the Zodiac killer, who terrorized San Francisco from the late '60's through the '70's. Like "Memories of Murder", the investigation is hamstrung by limitations of the technology. One of the most memorable sequences depicts Anthony Edwards doing a great deal of phone jockeying to coordinate sharing evidence with the police departments of other counties, all of it being sent by mail because no one has fax machines. There is also the lack of advanced forensic technology, as well as dealing with unreliable evidence.

The investigation leads to dead end after dead end, slowly destroying the spirits of the three central characters: a cop, a reporter and a cartoonist-turned-amateur sleuth (respectively played by Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr. and Jake Gyllenhaal) as the mystery of the case leads to their own lives coming apart. There is one obvious suspect, Arthur Leigh Allen, who all but gives the police every reason to suspect him. Yet, all the evidence against him is circumstantial, leading to even more frustration.

Wrongly labeled a serial killer movie, this is a movie about how obsession consumes those who want answers. What makes this an intentionally frustrating film is that the solution is never provided. Sometimes, those of us looking for the answers because we want to right the wrongs in the world will never get their satisfaction. We will become like Robert Graysmith sitting alone at home sifting through papers trying to make one connection that will solve the mystery and not realizing that he has driven everyone close to him away.

The Host (dir. Bong Joon-Ho, scrs. Bong, Chul-hyun Baek & Won-jun Ha) (released March 9, 2007)

Calling "The Host" a monster movie does not do it any justice. It also happens to be a dysfunctional family comedy/drama, an action movie, science fiction and a satire. Bong Joon-Ho is an expert at mixing film genres not only within the same movie, but sometimes within the same scene. The first monster attack outdoes most action sequences we see in current Hollywood films. Yet, this is not a special effects-driven film. He invests each of the characters with a great deal of heart even when they threaten to become caricatures. There is also a great deal of social commentary, directed at both the South Korean and U.S. governments for being responsible for creating the monster.

I remember watching this and "Pan's Labyrinth" within days of one another and found it odd that both have similar endings involving the fates of the little girls. "The Host" ultimately becomes about how the girl's family comes together to destroy the creature after the government has not only failed, but also seems to be causing more damage to its citizens. We learn that it is best not to rely on the government when it clearly does not have your best interests at heart. I wrote more about "The Host" in this article.

Once (dir & scr. John Carney) (released May 16, 2007)

This was one of the few low-to-no-budget independent films that actually struck a chord with me in the decade. Amidst all the complex visions on display in other films, this one made me appreciate the modest aims and heartfelt execution of a very simple story. A film told through songs and awkward, real-feeling conversations, it is the story of a broke Irish guitarist and a younger Czech woman who also happens to play the piano. Nearly every scene managed to conjure up emotions about the nervous first steps of a relationship, showing these two characters get closer and then push each other away just a bit.

What I greatly appreciated about the movie was how well the not-so-veiled emotions of the characters are expressed through the music they make together. Take that early scene when they visit a music shop and slowly warm up to each other while playing a song together. Yet, few words are exchanged. It is all in the music and their facial expressions. It is also important to note how the film does not discount the realities of the world in its ending. Sometimes, you may have feelings for someone, but you still cannot quite leave older relationships behind even if they are not the best choice you could have made.

Ratatouille (dir. & scr. Brad Bird) (released June 29, 2007)

This was the Pixar film that seemed to forget to aim itself at children. Brad Bird, who was actually a last-minute replacement as director, took the story of a rat who wants to be a cook and not only turns it into a movie about being an artist, but manages to argue for the importance of criticism. Set in Paris and featuring some of the most lovely imagery that Pixar has produced, Bird continues to further develop his themes from "The Incredibles" about the talented being allowed to thrive in a world of mediocrity. Remy, a sewer rat, gets separated from his rather uncouth family and friends and winds up at a restaurant eventually becoming the top cook by controlling the lowly dish washer like a puppet.

Obviously, there will be the complaints aimed at all Bird films that he is elitist or is promoting the idea that it is okay to look down upon anyone who is not gifted. It may be a lot about how one sees the world and whether they tend to think mediocrity does seem to rise to the top. I think a lot of this went over children's heads because they have yet to experience even a fraction of the disappointment adults have when they figure out how little merit matters in the world.

Bird leaves the final moments of the film to a speech by the food critic, Anton Ego (voiced by Peter O'Toole), who talks about the importance of discovering the new and original and how talent can come from any person. I do not think that is necessarily elitist, as much as hopeful that art will continue and last if you are willing to be open-minded to what your perception of an artist is.

Exiled (dir. Johnnie To, scrs. Kam-Yuen Szeto & Tin-Shing Yip) (released August 31, 2007)

Hong Kong director Johnnie To usually makes films at the rate of about two per year, a one-man factory of filmmaking, almost always elevating what would feel like stale genre material in most other hands. This film is a semi-sequel to To's "The Mission", though he has denied that despite both films being about a team of five hit men played by four of the five actors from the earlier film. Plus, the back story established at the beginning of "Exiled" happens to be the story of "The Mission". To's direction is always assured in its compositions and pacing, but this film has a surprising amount of heart and display of camaraderie that makes it more than what Joe Bob Briggs used to call "gun-fu".

Beginning with a drawn out build-up worthy of Sergio Leone that leads to a massive shootout inside a very small apartment, "Exiled" consistently makes odd left turns with the opening sequence resulting in no deaths, but all the participants having a genial dinner with each other. To moves from inspired set piece to another, while still allowing the small moments and interactions between the members of the team their time. It is a film with great action and humor, while also making the concept of a code of honor amongst criminals more believable than it usually is in this genre.

Into the Wild (dir. & scr. Sean Penn) (released September 21, 2007)

While I admired Penn's work as a director on both "The Indian Runner" and "The Pledge", he took a huge step forward in this film engaging our emotions and becoming a stronger visual director. It is based on the true story of Christopher McCandless, who rid himself of all his belongings and hiked across the country before finally staying in the Alaskan wild where he was found dead months later. Much of the debate about the film has been about one views McCandless as a true free spirit or someone who was both reckless in his ways and unnecessarily inconsiderate of his worrying parents. While I believe McCandless was certainly way over his head with his ideas of living amongst nature, I cannot help but admire the urge to get rid of the belongings that trap us in a routine existence.

Emile Hirsch gives a terrific performance, having to carry the entire 2 1/2 hour film on his shoulders, while the rest of the cast in their bit parts make vivid impressions, particularly Hal Holbrook who does great work in the final half hour of the film. The cinematography does an effective job at depicting both the beauty of nature and the harshness of the wild. This was the first film that I detected a great deal of warmth from Penn as a director, as well as a great deal of affection for both McCandless and every other character whose lives he enters briefly. Despite showing the parents warts and all, he also allows them moments when they begin to realize that many of their actions may have pushed away their son.

Sometimes, I wonder if this film felt outdated to most, as it wears its idealism on its sleeve and believes that it is possible to break free from a life of conformity. Penn's film struck a chord with those of us who have gone increasingly exhausted with consumer culture, as much as we struggle a great deal with wanting to take part in it. Whether McCandless was a fool or not, he was, for a very brief period, free.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (dir. & scr. Andrew Dominik) (released September 21, 2007)

Despite starring one of Hollywood's biggest stars in one of his best performances, this was one of the most bizarrely under-seen and barely released films with a relatively sizable budget. It was actually inspired casting to have Brad Pitt play Jesse James, as this film was surprisingly one of the few in the decade to deal with the obsession of celebrity culture. Robert Ford idolizes Jesse James, devouring all the stories told and written about him until he is given the chance to join his gang so that he can shadow all of his moves first hand. Casey Affleck gives a borderline-creepy performance that is also quite sad depicting a character who spends his entire life wanting what James had: fame and the ability to instill fear in others.

"Assassination" has some of the most beautiful cinematography by the always inventive Roger Deakins. Nearly every shot seems like a painting of an idealized memory, working against the message of the film which reminds us through Jesse James' crimes that this was not someone worth devoting a great deal of time admiring. Just because he had gotten away with so many robberies making him some sick version of a folk hero, it does not mean that we should forget that he was and would always be a psychopathic killer.

While the tone and pacing of the movie recalled Terrence Malick for some, outside of the hand in the weeds shot, I always considered "Assassination" to recall one specific film: "Barry Lyndon". In both, the central characters attempt to achieve a new status by basically destroying others' lives and then realize notoriety and social status is not all that it was cracked up to be. When he shoots Jesse James in the back of the head, Robert Ford becomes the 19th century version of a reality show contestant. He becomes famous for dubious reasons and is unable to accept all the derision directed at him because of that.

Michael Clayton (dir. & scr. Tony Gilroy) (released October 5, 2007)

"Clayton" was one of the rare times when a filmmaker succeeded in delivering an old-fashioned Hollywood drama, which almost makes it seem groundbreaking. George Clooney gives his best performance in the kind of role Harrison Ford should have been doing years ago. Plus, there is strong supporting work from both Tom Wilkinson and Tilda Swinton. It is a simple morality tale with Clooney playing a "lawyer" who spends all of his time doing the dirty work of a top firm and fixing messes created by clients or, in this instance, the main defense lawyer who grows a conscience in the middle of litigation over whether the chemicals in a weed-killer causes cancer.

Right from the beginning, Gilroy sets a sinister tone embracing the darkness of offices as if Gordon Willis had come out of retirement to shoot this film. Whenever any scene or moment threatens to be showy, the director shows he is more interested in the calculations each of the characters make. Each of them are smart, but show varying abilities in handling and solving problems. You can see the characters thinking at all moments, recognizing clearly whether they are panicking or are a few steps ahead of the game.

The ending of the film is a textbook example of how to make a genuine audience-pleasing finale. A simple confrontation between two people in a lobby, where Clayton resorts to his instincts as a dirty work lawyer finally in the service of something decent. I love how the film ends with a man sitting alone in a cab trying to come to terms with what happened and what he did, a slight smile creeping across his face when he realizes he was capable of having a soul.

No Country for Old Men (dirs. & scrs. Joel & Ethan Coen) (released November 9, 2007)

There has been a great deal of discussion about this film which I consider to be the Coens' masterwork. Adapted very faithfully from Cormac McCarthy's novel, the Coens add little touches that improve on what is already top notch source material. Every sequence is a study of great filmmaking from the opening sequence that depicts Anton Chigurh (played by an unexpectedly menacing Javier Bardem) killing a police officer, a chase at dawn with trucks and an unrelenting dog, a conversation at a remote gas station that nearly ends in death, and a shootout at a hotel that then continues onto the street. Despite all the mayhem I described, this is the quietest film the Coen Brothers have ever made, which makes these sequences all the more chilling.

Of course, objections have been raised at the turn the movie takes for the final half hour, which always puzzles me. Some people ask that movies be more original, but when this avoids the usual good vs. bad confrontation thriller finale, then some of those same people get upset. The final half hour is when the movie moves from being a great thriller to something that will stick with you for a long time. We ponder how right it is for anyone to steal money. We think about how the changing world corrupts the values of the past or even consider if the world has always been sinister from the beginning. We contemplate whether there is a greater hand guiding the actions of the story or whether the characters control their own fate by their moral judgments.

While the performances are uniformly great, I consider Tommy Lee Jones' work a bit under-appreciated. We realize at the very end of the movie that it was mostly about this character who remained mostly on the periphery of all the action, as he begins to admit that he is scared of the world around him and that age has made him more powerless to do anything about it. All he can do is think about his dreams where images of his father haunt him. Then, he wakes up.

The Mist (dir. & scr. Frank Darabont) (released November 21, 2007)

Some of us need to overcompensate for beloved films that have been mercilessly beat down by a good percentage of critics and audiences. You cannot quite prove that a movie like this was not given a fair shot without resorting to making assumptions about the integrity of others' opinions. Yet, I also cannot help but recall how Frank Darabont has been tarred with the sentimentality accusation for so long, though his best movies tend to feature long stretches of brutality before those points are reached. What also bothers me is that the '00's were notable for producing the most repulsive horror movies that were actually more about torture, while "The Mist" went unappreciated.

After watching "The Mist", I felt Darabont understood horror movies. The black & white version of the film (which I recommend as the best way to see it as it suits the low grade special effects, as well as the mood) could easily pass for something made in the 1950's. Like Bong Joon-Ho's "The Host", he also demonstrates that a movie about monsters does not literally have to be a movie about monsters. While a group of people are stuck inside of a supermarket trying to fend off creatures, the real evil that lurks is human nature, as embodied by the bible-toting Mrs. Carmody (played by Marcia Gay Harden in the role she was perfect for). In one of the most important movie quotes of the decade, Ollie the clerk (played by Toby Jones) states so succinctly, "As a species we're fundamentally insane. Put more than two of us in a room, we pick sides and start dreaming up reasons to kill one another. Why do you think we invented politics and religion?" How many horror films can come up with something that insightful?

One cannot go without mentioning the ending which makes you feel like you were gut-punched. Sure, as any other Darabont film, it is quite manipulative but in a way that does not insult my intelligence. You are left stunned and watch the end credits roll while asking yourself repeatedly, "What is wrong with people in this world?" Actually, this same paragraph applies to our final film as well.

There Will Be Blood (dir. & scr. Paul Thomas Anderson) (released December 26, 2007)

It was the one-two-three punch of "Zodiac", "No Country for Old Men" and "There Will Be Blood" that made 2007 the shining year of the decade for me. Before "Blood", it was obvious that Paul Thomas Anderson was someone with an abundance of filmmaking talent, but also had a bit of trouble letting go of his influences. While "Punch-Drunk Love" was the first step away from that, "Blood" was the film that made me believe that Anderson made that giant leap that other directors of his generation seemed too afraid to make. Though this film was dedicated to the late great Robert Altman, he finally learned to emerge from the shadows of his favorite directors.

Daniel Day-Lewis gives a towering performance as the now-iconic character Daniel Plainview, who embodies so many contradictory characteristics that I wonder what movie those who call him a "great villain" have seen. While Plainview is misanthropic and has great difficulty showing proper affection to his son during trying times, he is far from evil. In fact, compared to the huckster preacher Eli Sunday, Plainview is at least honest and has quite an effective bullshit detector. Unlike most others, I always interpreted his final scene with his son H.W. as his admittance that he failed as a father. He would rather his now grown son stay away so that he does not get infected with the same bilious personality as his adopted father.

If anyone wanted to make a case that Eli Sunday was a great villain, I would certainly second that notion. Wearing a George W. Bush-like smirk at times and having little to no shame in hiding behind religion to justify his greed and hypocrisy, he is a pretty despicable human being. I am quite surprised that the film was not protested against by religious groups, as it seemed to me one of the most damning statements against organized religion of recent times.

While Paul Thomas Anderson has always been assured in his direction from his very first film, he comes up with some great images here while also adopting a more classical approach. This was the first Anderson film where it did not seem as if he was showing off his abilities to pull off elaborate shots. It was also his willingness to take chances with the material that blew me away. Like some other films previously mentioned, there were many complaints directed at the last hour of the film. It was actually Ethan Coen's reaction to "Blood" that made me think he understood it better than others, when he proclaimed that it was hilarious. We end with a final confrontation between a lying preacher and an embittered alcoholic oil man, a true battle of the futile for the 21st century. Revenge is deservedly served to the false prophet, but it is still a petty victory for the capitalist. We're finished, indeed.

Not quite yet. There is one more part to this series. Movies have not quite been the same for me since the finale of "There Will Be Blood" unspooled. The years 2008 and 2009 bring us closer to the present, which also makes me contemplate the future. The final part of this series will have less movies to discuss, as I cannot help believe that we have been in a bit of a rut during this time. (And this year in movies has not gotten any better.) It makes me begin to consider how we all need to evolve, the audience, the filmmakers and the critics, to get us out of this creative slog that has happened concurrently with the world's economic meltdown. We need to think differently and we all know that generally scares the shit out of most people.

So, I leave you with a preview of our next part with this appropriate clip from an otherwise forgettable film...

A Tale of Two Bad Lieutenants

2010-05-06T09:00:00.009-04:00

I recently watched Werner Herzog's not-quite-remake (more like a riff) of Abel Ferrara's "Bad Lieutenant" and then revisited the earlier film the following night. Originally planning to write about both, I think the more interesting comparisons between the two have to do with how they were approached from the distinctive filmmaking viewpoints of both directors rather than what little plot or story each has to offer. This was something best conveyed visually. Sometimes, words cannot describe these films.

Each film is clearly a product of the directors' sensibilities, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. The tones of both films are also very much dictated by the central performances of Harvey Keitel and Nicolas Cage, who bring completely different energies to their roles.

It has not been a secret that when it was announced Herzog was going to make his "Lieutenant", there were several nasty comments exchanged between the two filmmakers. This video remix, as I call it, tries to show how these filmmakers' visions overlap, as well as fight with one another. It is rare to see two such notable directors tackle the same idea, as opposed to the usual scenario: a hack remaking a superior director's work. Oddly, in this case, I believed the superior director made the lesser, though bizarrely fascinating film.

You should be warned there are SPOILERS for both movies. I also do not shy away from either film's most lurid moments, so consider this piece very-NSFW.

When Action Movies Were Fun: The Good, The Bad, The Weird

2010-05-02T10:30:00.034-04:00

We are a few days from the start of the summer movie season, in which, week after week, Hollywood will release potential blockbusters with budgets that well into nine figures. Even taking into account the number of underwhelming movies that are dumped in theaters during the first four months of the year, summer, with very few exceptions, has turned into a barren wasteland of manufactured entertainment. These are movies made in corporate boardrooms, conjured up through formulas involving demographics, quadrants and other corporate buzz words that, sadly, due to the predictability of movie audiences, has proven to be effective in luring ticketbuyers. Take a look at any of these movies and there is a certain joylessness to the proceedings, where directors bring a television ad aesthetic to the filmmaking and movie stars look like they are thinking about little more than the check clearing in their bank account.

This will not be about me ranting against the idea of Hollywood making action spectacles, but the reality is that sometimes they really do not seem to care about the quality of the product they put out. How much fun and imagination can filmmakers infuse their movies with when every creative decision is trying to second guess moviegoers' reactions as summed up by test scores and spreadsheets? Whatever happened to the days when George Miller can go out in the Australian desert and shoot something as batshit insane as "The Road Warrior"? Or how about comparing the Steven Spielberg who made "Raiders of the Lost Ark" with such enthusiasm for the possibilities of cinema to the Spielberg who directed "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" as if held at gunpoint by George Lucas? Sometimes, you just want to go to the movies and leave with a smile on your face, such as I did when I saw "The Good, the Bad, the Weird".

As with most foreign films these days, even one that is sheer delirious fun like this is, "Weird" is being given a rather half-baked release. On its opening weekend in New York City, it played on one of the smaller screens at the IFC Center. The theatrical release seems like an obligation, so that most of the money can be made from its VOD release. While this is an effective way for smaller films to be seen, "Weird" is made to be seen on the big screen. Directed by Kim Ji-Woon and taking some inspiration for its premise and characters from Sergio Leone's "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly", this film has an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink quality to its filmmaking.

Having written a lengthy piece about how Quentin Tarantino sampled Leone in "Inglourious Basterds", you would think that this film would be subject to the same criticism from me. The problem I had with Tarantino is that he seemed to apply Leone's directing style without his eye for compositions, as well as employing Ennio Morricone's music in places it never fit well for a movie that does not really comment on Leone, Westerns or the macho posturing present in genre films. I never believed it did much beyond Tarantino proclaiming that he loved watching Leone movies. Kim Ji-Woon takes from "Ugly" directly and then spins the tale into something else to the point where only a couple of scenes recall those spaghetti western classics. "Weird" moves at such a relentless pace, the opposite of Leone's drawn out symphonies of silence. Though Kim has as a strong eye for widescreen compositions as Leone, he does not really borrow a whole lot from him visually.

The reality is that "The Good, The Bad, The Weird" is actually a '30's serial, more in common with the mixture of adventure, brutality and cynicism of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" than the subsequent Indiana Jones sequels that watered down the character by making him heroic. Set in 1930's Manchuria, the movie begins with a train robbery where "The Bad" Park Chang-yi (played by Byung-hun Lee) and "The Weird", a bandit named Yoon Tae-goo (played by Song Kang-Ho, fast becoming one of my favorite actors), both attempt to steal the same map, which supposedly leads to a buried treasure. Sound familiar? At the same time, "The Good" named Park Do-won (played by Woo-sung Jung) shows up to collect a bounty on "The Bad".

From its opening moments, you can tell Kim is not shy about showing his love for filmmaking. The first shot follows a CGI hawk flying in the sky until it swoops up a carcass from a train track right before a train passes. Then, another great shot comes soon after (the entire intro I describe is available here) which follows "The Weird" from behind through several train cars that almost feels like Kim casually tosses away, as opposed to calling attention to it by lingering on it too long. The sequence cuts between our three main characters, establishing the space and action, while also deftly inserting humorous bits courtesy of "The Weird", who lucks into having the map fall into his hands. This leads to both "The Good" and "The Bad" trying to hunt him down.

The plot of the rest of the movie is simple. It was actually pretty refreshing for once to see a modern-day action/adventure that did not feel the need to stop every fifteen minutes to deliver chunks of clumsy exposition. Any time, something needs to be explained, it is done swiftly and efficiently. Basically, "The Weird" narrowly escapes from the other two several times. Allegiances are formed, then broken. A few secrets about each of the characters are revealed. And, to no one's surprise, the movie ends with the three of them having a standoff, which is probably the most direct lift from "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly", except Kim wisely steers the end in a completely different direction especially the final reveal of the treasure. The plot is interesting enough to support the bravura filmmaking on display, but I will not be delusional enough to think this is a deep film.

Yet, the director understands how to build excitement in sequences, as well as set up and deliver the comedic moments. In the middle of the film, there is a great shootout in a shantytown with "The Good" and "The Weird" taking on "The Bad" and all of his henchmen. Once again, you marvel at some of the elaborate crane shots that lay out the cinematic space, as well as the precise cutting. With the filmmaking I see these days, sometimes I have to note when the more traditional methods work so much better. There are few moments of shakey-cam in the film, but, thankfully, the director keeps those shots to a minimum.

The final chase set piece in the desert with every character plus the Japanese army chasing "The Weird" is also a classic action sequence, reminding me of the beloved multi-vehicle chase sequences that George Miller concocted for the climaxes of both "The Road Warrior" and "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome". Characters are shooting at one another from jeeps, horses and motorcycles, at times, even switching vehicles mid-chase. For the most part, you see actual stuntmen, as opposed to the CGI stunt recreations that mar modern action films. You even feel a bit disturbed knowing that some of those horses crashing to the ground are probably real. The music choices throughout the film are inspired. Of course, there are some nods to Morricone's spaghetti western scores, but the majority of the film is scored with Spanish-influenced music complete with castanets. In an even more demented choice, the score to the final chase scene uses the Spanish-tinged remake of the song "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" made famous by The Animals and fits more cohesively here than it did in "Kill Bill".

There is a complete lack of restraint to the director's vision that may be too much at times, but the movie is alive in every frame. Kim certainly wears his influences on his sleeve, but he presents them filtered through his sensibilities. "Weird" becomes more of an ode to the joys of popcorn movies can give us rather than just paying tribute to his favorite films and directors as if this were some cinematheque tribute. The movie, with cinematography by Mo-gae Lee & Seung-Chul Oh, has the look of a live action comic book with vibrant colors popping in every frame. The colors are so saturated that even the details of the rusted metal in the previously mentioned shantytown sequence is quite beautiful.

As far as the characters go, much like I would never claim this movie to be deep, I am also fully aware that the characters are archetypes, each sketched to varying success. "The Good" is clearly the weak link of the trio, by nature of being the straight man within all of this madness. Not that Woo-sung Jung did a bad job, but he does suffer a bit from being the least colorful person. "The Bad", however, is quite an oddball villain. I actually did not realize I had seen Park Chang-yi before in "Joint Security Area" due to this character's distinctive look. It is not a surprise that this character does not hesitate to kill anyone. (He casually shoots a woman in the opening train robbery sequence just because she was screaming too much.) What makes the character interesting enough is showing how easily his pride gets wounded. Having a reputation for chopping off fingers, he is reminded constantly that others believe "The Good" to be the quicker draw. Often, it seems like his ego is driving the character through this film rather than finding the treasure.

This leaves us to "The Weird", which is yet again, another standout performance from Song Kang-Ho. Like Tuco from "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly", Yoon Tae-goo demonstrates that he can be a competent bandit and gunfighter when the time calls for it. But, somehow, his bizarre personality and his propensity for macho posturing unfit for his stature results in his character creating disasters everywhere he goes. Yet, he still retains just enough ingenuity to get himself out of jams. Song Kang-Ho finds just the right balance to both sides of his character, so that you can believe when he plays the fool, as much as you can understand how this man has managed to survive this long. If South Korean films were seen as widely here in the States, the range of Song's performances would be greater appreciated. Perhaps, because he looks rather ordinary, Song disappears into roles such as this one or his other performances in "The Host", "Memories of Murder", "Thirst", "Joint Security Area" and "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance".

I want to reiterate that I am fully aware that "The Good, The Bad, The Weird" is neither a poignant or important film. In fact, if you called it a dumb or silly film, I would probably would not disagree with you. However, I do not believe it was ever aiming to be high art. If the movie made some half-assed attempts to be self-important, its spell would not work. It is a shame that, due to its subtitles, it has been restricted to an art house ghetto in its U.S. release. It transported me to when I was a kid, remembering when summer movies back in the early '80's were not as cynical in their intentions as they are now. This will never quite be in the same league as "Raiders" or "The Road Warrior", as those movies reached a little more for depth, but it sure stands out from what is made these days.

Filmmakers back in the '80's were not making what few serious cinephiles would proclaim was great art, as much as they were making movies that make you recall them with a smile on your face and say, "Can you believe they did that sequence?" It was a time when directors were not so blatantly business-oriented in their filmmaking decisions and demonstrated a certain amount of craft when bringing their visions to the screen. Perhaps, I have gotten older and see the past through rose-tinted glasses. Or maybe I dread the thought of movies like "Iron Man 2" or "The A-Team" attracting big crowds this summer while "The Good, The Bad, The Weird" will disappear virtually unnoticed.

Yet, I will remember sitting in a half-filled theater with less than 100 seats and every single person in attendance having a blast, excited by every inventive action sequence and laughing hard at every absurd joke. Sometimes, we forget during these times of corporatized filmmaking that it is okay to find some pure joy in the images projected on the screen.

The Good, The Bad, The Weird was seen at the IFC Center and will be available on IFC on Demand through June.

Idealism in a Time of Extremism: The Human Condition

2010-04-30T13:30:00.023-04:00

Throughout film history, many of society's social problems have been tackled by filmmakers, whether it be through protest, propaganda or more nuanced approaches. Writing about the last decade in film, I have noted when certain films have directly commented on the important historical and political moments of the aughts. Unexpectedly, it was a 50-year old trilogy of Japanese films just under 10 hours in length that I believe effectively touched upon what has defined American society in our new century. What does a movie like this have to say about the way we live now? Perhaps, we have become a society where the shouting voices have overwhelmed the reasonable ones and strict ideological stances have failed us time and time again.

"The Human Condition", directed and co-written by Masaki Kobayashi and starring the great Tatsuya Nakadai, was a film I had only heard about when it was being resurrected for repertory theater runs about a year and a half ago. Since it was a long and challenging film, it was often difficult to find many filmgoers willing to make the commitment. For that reason, I could not see it myself until the Criterion Collection, after another one of their exhaustive restoration projects, released the entire film on DVD, allowing me to probably absorb it better at home than I would have sitting in a theater for an all-day marathon showing.

Between discovering the film and actually watching it, I also took the time to sample Kobayashi's work after having never seen any of his movies previously, watching both "Samurai Rebellion" and "Hara-Kiri" in the last year. Both of these films were made after "The Human Condition", but had clued me into what were some of Kobayashi's primary themes, particularly how it is important for one to defy authority if they are forced to stand up for their own family. Living in the United States, as opposed to being in Japan during the 1600's, may not make these films immediate to my world, but, yet, I could not help but notice some of the parallels. Sure, we live in a democracy, but we certainly were not short of moments in the last few decades where the government casually imposed its will for the "good of the people".

Adapted from a novel by Gomikawa Junpei, "The Human Condition" tells the story of Kaji (played by Nakadai), an idealist and socialist, during World War II, a war that has inspired many filmmakers for the last two decades. Though it is technically a war movie, it refreshingly does not traffic in the same war movie cliches of recent times. We are not lectured to about how war is a bad thing, while constantly reminding you of the sacrifices that soldiers made during WWII. What Kobayashi is interested in doing is dismantling the entire nature of war and exposing the mindsets that not only lead us to battle, but also the ugliness that emerges from taking other peoples' lives in the name of your country.

The film was released as three films with each film comprised of two parts. The first film titled "No Greater Love" centers around Kaji, who is a conscientious objector to the war, being placed in charge of a mining operation in Manchuria. The first scenes show Kaji and his girlfriend Michiko (played Michiyo Aratama), who is pressuring him to marry her. Though Michiko is clearly the love of his life, Kaji does not want to make a commitment during a time of great uncertainty, especially with the possibility of being shipped off to fight and not making it back. However, the opportunity to run the mine allows him to get an exemption from the war and be with Michiko. In this first part, Kaji is clearly shown as someone willing to stick to his principles, nearly to a fault, as his more humanistic approach to treating the laborers at the mine backfires often.

During this section of "Condition", Kaji comes across as a bit self-righteous, even though we certainly admire him for what attempting to do what few others are willing to try. He is not fighting the system, as much as he is battling the entire fascist mentality of his country through peaceful resistance. This comes more evident in the second half of the film, where he is forced to use Chinese POWs as laborers and finds himself trying to manage them along with the other workers, as well as the prostitutes brought in to sleep with the laborers. Kaji is always assured that what he is doing is the right thing, but often, the prisoners take advantage of the many allowances his policies give them. Particularly, the Chinese POWs look for every opportunity to escape, as Kaji can only do so much to make being imprisoned a tolerable experience.

The turning point is when some of the POWs are mistakenly perceived by the Japanese as escaping, leading to some of them being executed publicly in front of the camp with Kaji forced to bear witness. Though his protests save some of the lives, Kaji is then subjected to torture for several days, as his superiors suspect him of having allowed the prisoners to escape or are just simply suspicious of why he shows them so much sympathy. This is the first major instance when Kaji's ideological stance backfires on him, tragically. Demonstrating how the system is stacked against him, Japan takes away his exemption and drafts him into the army. This puts Kaji in the position he was afraid he would be in when first resisting marrying Michiko. He does not want someone to love him and then possibly face the possibility of losing him to the war forever.

In first part of the second film "Road to Eternity", we follow Kaji as he trains in a boot camp in conditions not much better than in the mines. This section of the film recalls the boot camp sequence that makes up the first third of Stanley Kubrick's "Full Metal Jacket" a great deal that it no doubt inspired it. Here, Kaji experiences the abusive behavior of the ranking officers. At one point, he even tries to protect another recruit, Obara (played by Kunie Tanaka), who is clearly cracking under the pressure which does not surprisingly end well for everyone, though not as horrific as the Sgt. Hartman/Pvt. Pyle standoff in "Jacket". Still, Kaji is seen by his superiors as being responsible for the situation. In fact, it always seems like his best intentions wind up with someone else suffering tragic circumstances and Kaji assuming the blame.

As we reach the midpoint of "The Human Condition", we begin to see what Kobayashi is exploring with his subject matter. While clearly his sympathies lie with Kaji, he certainly does not let the character's stubborn righteousness off the hook. The problem with some idealists is that they refuse to sometimes acknowledge how the world works and never adjust their principles to try to make their ideas work. It is a flaw that recurs throughout Kaji's journey. But, it is beyond this point when Kaji has to finally go into battle that his refusal to play the game, as you will, awakens him to the cruelties of the world.

The second half of "Road to Eternity" is actually the closest "The Human Condition" comes to a standard war movie. However, there is a key scene from the first half which resonates throughout the second. While training, his superiors allow Kaji one last conjugal visit with Michiko. It is one of the most powerful moments in the entire film, as Kaji almost finds it difficult to touch his wife during their final moments, asking her to stand nude looking out the window at the sunrise to provide one final memory of her before he goes away to battle. Throughout the more traditional war scenes in the second half of "Road to Eternity", every action of Kaji is influenced by his desire to return home to his wife and to have more than the memory of their last moment together.

Despite being a pacifist, Kaji oddly proves to be an effective soldier. His sharpshooting skills are exemplary, while he tends to step up into a leadership position when the circumstances call for it. The battle scenes in "The Human Condition" only amount to less than half an hour, but they are presented as stark and brutal. "Road to Eternity" climaxes at a moment of violence that is both intimate and harrowing. Kaji, who we see slowly giving over his soul to being a soldier just so that he can survive, commits an act that is unexpected of him and changes how we see him significantly for the rest of the film.

The third part of "The Human Condition", "A Soldier's Prayer", begins with Kaji making a decision to abandon the army when it looks like Japan has lost and returning home by foot to rejoin Michiko. The film does not let up testing Kaji's spirit, as he and his fellow soldiers are joined on the journey by Japanese refugees trying to make it home themselves. They face brutal conditions with no food or relief of any kind, as they attempt to avoid both the remaining Japanese soldiers who do not look kindly to those abandoning the cause, as well as the Russian army looking to take prisoners.

Ultimately, Kaji finds himself taken prisoner by the Russians, bringing his journey full circle to where it started at the mines. Though, at first, he believes the Russians would try to treat him and other prisoners with the same level of humanity he attempted for the Chinese POWs back in the first part, since they were supposed to subscribe to socialist ideals as opposed to fascist ones. Instead, the Russians prove themselves to be just as cold and violent in their tendencies. This proves that ideologies, whether well-intentioned or not, are ultimately overtaken by those who instincts are based on power rather than principles. Even someone like Kaji we witness turning into someone less compassionate and selfless, as his love for his wife supersedes his political beliefs and behavior.

"The Human Condition" is not the easiest film to sit through. I had actually watched it more like a 6-part miniseries over the course of two weeks, so that actually helped deal with the unrelenting despair of watching Kaji's story. However, I was still engrossed, very much anticipating the next part when I reached the end of the previous one. It also was not hard to find its themes relevant to the world we live in today. First of all, I cannot help but note again that the lead character is a socialist. These days, we have seen the word tossed around as accusatory rhetoric by those who have no basic understanding of what it means. Kobayashi's film is certainly not socialist propaganda, though we see some of its tenets practiced by the lead character. The movie does identify with Kaji's idealism, but does not romanticize it. As I mentioned before, his beliefs result in well-intentioned actions that often result in greater tragedies. The film seeks to convey that you cannot practice the ideas of socialism when everyone else is functioning in a fascist world. The deck is stacked against you right from the start. So, while you admire Kaji for standing up for what he believes in, you can acknowledge that it is quite foolish and unrealistic of him to believe he can accomplish what he wants to.

In regards to the fascism on display, one cannot help but draw parallels to the many screaming groups that have been given a large stage by our news media to practice their brand of bullying. Admittedly, it does become sometimes comically repetitive when Japanese superiors in the film, whether in the mining or boot camp, choose to discipline the rank and file by constantly slapping them across the face. Granted, a slap is one of the most degrading acts to inflict on men by other men. There is something about the act that really cuts someone else down to size. When you substitute that act with, say, name-calling (Socialist! Hitler!) or veiled insults (Only small towns represent real America!) or more obviously, questioning the patriotism of those who do not follow the will of the government, you can understand why I do not think Japan in World War II is such a far cry from what we have seen in the United States for some time.

More importantly, "The Human Condition" truly gets at how the world beats people like Kaji down. Whether you think he may be self-righteousness or not, you still admire him for how far he is willing to stick to his principles, especially during a time when few hesitate to sell them out for convenience. You can also understand how much he loves his wife and struggles with the decisions he makes that either can make his life with her easier or can put him into a position that can separate them for good. Once Kaji begins to realize that his beliefs may have done the latter, there is a limit to how much you can fault him for some of his more questionable acts in the second half of the film. You do sense he takes responsibility for his actions on the battlefield and thinks of himself as a lesser man,. But you cannot forget that it was his country, and, more importantly, the mindset of Japan that has forced him to abandon what he believes in. A nation hellbent on winning a war is not going to concern itself with humanistic practices and nuanced concepts. Extremist attitudes exist outside the land of reason. By the third film, Kaji pledges his love for his wife rather than his country or principles.

One cannot discuss "The Human Condition" without noting the phenomenal filmmaking on display. Despite the length and scope of the film, this is actually one of the more intimate epics I have seen. Employing a very stark and contrasty look in its black and white imagery, Kobayashi conjures up some great shots throughout the film. The widescreen compositions never really go for a large scale feel, as much as they seem more concerned with showing how characters are almost a small part of something much greater than they are. The movie represents itself visually by placing someone in front of distinctive landscapes or cloud patterns. The cinematography is quite effective, as the image defines itself by using the varying degrees of grey between white and black.

It is a film that expresses its emotions through imagery: characters thinking in front of a clear sky, grey skies contrasting with white clouds during an act of violence or the pitch blackness of either the labor or boot camps at night. The style of the film varies slightly as it moves towards the end. "No Greater Love" is shot more classically, while "Road to Eternity" which focuses on the war has a less leisurely pace. The third part, Kobayashi experiments more, as it becomes about the state of Kaji's mind, employing quick flashback cutaways and using freeze frames to emphasize moments. This is a visually expressive film that tries to achieve more than empty beauty in its shots.

The most important aspect to note is the performance of Tatsuya Nakadai, particularly the way he subtly modulates the way his character chooses to express himself throughout the film. Primarily known for being the actor that Toshiro Mifune killed in several samurai battles (Nakadai actually filmed his role as the gun-toting villain in "Yojimbo" while filming "Condition"), in recent years, Nakadai has begun to receive his due for his work as an actor. Look at his later lead roles in "Hara-Kiri" or "The Sword of Doom". There was also the later Kurosawa films after the director had a falling out with his usual lead Mifune and cast Nakadai in the central roles in both "Kagemusha" and "Ran".

Nakadai's performance is important to the success of "The Human Condition", as he is not afraid to portray the character's faults along with its strengths. The film could have been more relentless if it were a lesser actor in the role. You can see the weight of every decision on his face and body. It is startling to witness the physical and moral transformation from the wide-eyed idealist in the first film to the cynical and gruff soldier in the third film. It is a monumental and, for the most part, non-showy performance that has strangely not been mentioned when the greatest performances in the history of film are discussed.

Then again, I am not sure how widely the film has been seen in recent times. As I had mentioned, it took a long time for me to even find out about "The Human Condition" or Masaki Kobayashi. I am sure that the film's length has scared off some, but the experience is worth it. Yes, I think it is an important film, but I believe we can view it through the prism of our current political and military cultures and understand what it is trying to achieve. The ambition of this movie is not merely about presenting an expansive tale about a world war, but to use that to explore the human spirit and how each of us find the will to fight for our souls and beliefs on a daily basis, especially when it is inconvenient.

The Human Condition was seen on the Criterion Collection DVD via Netflix.

Sympathy for Mr. Misanthropy: Greenberg

2010-04-20T19:00:00.004-04:00

Noah Baumbach's last three films have tended to stir up the same debate: How much is any audience member willing to spend with characters who have very obvious unlikeable qualities? I admit myself that I find his films often to be a tough sit, though all of them have normal to short running times. I am generally relieved when his films come to an end, though not necessarily in a bad way. It is clear that Baumbach has been working through some serious personal issues in this film and does not care to sugarcoat his characters' personal flaws by having them beg for your approval. This brings up an issue that has become more prevalent in the discussion of current films than it was, say, during the 1970's, which "Greenberg", in its cinematography and pacing, recall. How important is it to like the protagonists in our films?

The reason I say it is more of an issue now is that movies today are often populated by characters who are designed with certain obvious positive qualities such as being heroic, having a sense of humor, being completely selfless and sensitive to feelings from the opposite sex. These are done for mostly commercial reasons, as they operate under the notion that "likable" characters will make them more palatable to mainstream audiences. Who wants to spend two hours of your time with a character that you do not want to be around in real life? Compare this to the flawed anti-heroes that populated American films more frequently many years ago.

But, is the question as simple as that? There have been many examples in popular entertainment, the most obvious being the gangster genre, which often forces us to spend time caring about the lives of thuggish criminals. We often find that we want to live through characters like that because we get a certain thrill when we see them get away with things us boring people never would. Also, likability is often in the eye of the beholder. There are plenty of movies that are clearly designed to make the main characters likable that I often find completely detestable from watching the trailers alone.

Anything from the obnoxious leads from "Sex & the City" to pretty much most characters that happen to be played by Ryan Reynolds or Chris Evans. Sometimes, characters' likability can be so oversold that it tips over into smugness or simply reminds you of real life assholes who are so phony and transparent in their attempts to be all things to all people. It makes me wonder why it seems to bother so many that a character like Roger Greenberg is the focus of a film and, in turn, holding the director to some level of moral responsibility for his creation, as if writing an unlikeable person meant that he was condoning the character's actions.

"Greenberg" is the story of Roger Greenberg (played by Ben Stiller), who is a 40 year old New Yorker who housesits his more successful younger brother's home. There is not a lot whole lot of plot in this film, as it centers mostly around his start-and-stop relationship with his brother's assistant Florence (played by Greta Gerwig), as well as Greenberg catching up with old friends, particularly former bandmate Ivan (played by Rhys Ifans). It is also mentioned that Greenberg recently had a breakdown, resulting in a stay at a mental institution. Throughout the film, he is revealed to be a complete misanthrope, criticizing everyone and everything around him, while keeping emotional distance from those trying to reach out to him. At other times, his behavior becomes even less forgivable, as the peripheral characters are treated to his occasional outbursts or thinly-veiled putdowns.

The actions of Greenberg, or any of Baumbach's characters from previous films, are not necessarily heinous or even criminal. These are the actions of emotionally-stunted people who look to wound one another with words or relatively minor acts of pettiness. Now, taking into account that the lead character is played by a movie star which may cause some expectations (though I would never consider Stiller's mainstream persona to be likable), I still wonder why this character has bothered so many. I would theorize that his malcontent behavior combined with a life of missed opportunities and flat-out failures reminds one too many people of their own lives or, at least, someone very close to them. There's at least one Roger Greenberg in every family. Thus, the possibility of "Greenberg" offering any escape from their own reality goes out the window.

While I still think Baumbach has issues about how far he seems willing to push his characters' failures down your throat, I believe it is a mistake to say that this is all that the movie is attempting to do. As I suggested earlier, Baumbach is aware of how the character come across and is not merely indulging it or condoning, but actually treats them as if a specimen put under the telescope repeatedly. Yet, we cannot diagnose his problems with a few pat psychological diagnoses. Life combined with his personality has shaped his life, clearly not for the better. Sometimes, what others have done to him is unfair. Most of the time, Greenberg brings his misfortune upon himself, often reacting in a way to put off anyone in the vicinity of the dark cloud hanging over his head.

I do think it was brave for Ben Stiller (a last-minute replacement for Mark Ruffalo) to play this character, even though I do not think it was that much of a stretch. I have always found Stiller to come across as a fidgety, wired borderline asshole in movies even when he is supposed to be someone to root for. He is not exactly the warmest actor, which is put to better use in this film, as he seems nearly incapable of making a human connection that he could not ruin within minutes. This has probably some of the best work Stiller has ever done in his mostly underwhelming career. He has not had a good role since being part of Baumbach associate Wes Anderson's "The Royal Tenenbaums". It had reached the point where merely seeing Stiller's face in any trailer was a guaranteed reason to avoid that movie altogether.

The real find of the movie is Greta Gerwig, who brings a wholly original natural quality to her performance as Florence. I have not seen any of the "mumblecore" movies, where I have read she stood out from the amateur performances that defined those films. Baumbach may have been inspired by them by casting her in this movie. Fitting along with the '70's vibe, he also lets Gerwig's style of acting featuring awkward pauses, as well as off-kilter line readings, dictate the rhythm of the picture. Gerwig is quite fantastic in the role, a rare original talent during a time when twenty-something actors come across as vapid and packaged. A scene where she sings along to a crappy Paul McCartney song evokes such raw sadness without resorting to wringing her emotions on screen like most other actors would have chosen to do.

There have been complaints that Florence is just a doormat, which she is to a certain extent, but I would think Gerwig's performance in the last half hour of the film would dispel the notion that her character does not begin to stand up for herself. If anything, Florence takes bigger steps than Greenberg to deal with the problems she brings upon herself.

There are times during this movie (and Baumbach's other work) when, admittedly, I asked myself what it is about this person that the director wants us to get? His films are quite a difficult viewing experience because the exposure of character flaws can be relentless, but I do think his best films, this and "The Squid and the Whale", show some halfway genuine attempts for these people to acknowledge their self-absorption even if they cannot quite control it. "Margot at the Wedding" actually did prove the complaint that Baumbach is indulging petty behavior for uncomfortable laughs to be true. The characters in that movie went from slightly irredeemable to completely unhinged over the course of that story.

What Baumbach does in "Greenberg" is that he always acknowledges how others react to Greenberg, watching the expressions on their faces as they slowly lose patience with him. You see this with the generally good-hearted Florence, Greenberg's former girlfriend Beth (played by co-story writer Jennifer Jason Leigh) and especially his former bandmate Ivan. The climactic party sequence also shows his effect on those outside his social circle. When Greenberg's niece throws a party, he winds up doing lines of coke and unleashes some condescending remarks on the twenty-something set, which they respond to by mocking him back in return. This leads to one of the best scenes of the film when Ivan comes reluctantly to join the party only to have Greenberg accuse him of screwing up a record deal from 15 years back. The tirade includes a laundry list of accusations, in which he seems to be dissecting himself without any level of self-awareness until he reaches the very end of it.

This brings us back to the original question posed in this piece. How important is it for me to like Roger Greenberg? The thing is there is not a whole lot to like about him, but it does not mean that I do not see some of myself, as well as other people, in him. I do think the degree to which the film assumes a character's point of view makes a difference as to whether it is indulging it. I generally thought the movie was standing outside Roger Greenberg, studying him from a distance. Although Florence or Ivan are supporting roles compared to his, I would say we identify with them more (or wish that we can).

What does it say that I still feel uncomfortable talking about "Greenberg" weeks after seeing it and have had a difficult understanding my reaction to it? I cannot help but admire the risks Baumbach took with this movie, even with the benefit of having a very bankable movie star in the lead role. Considering what has been yet another lackluster start to this movie year, I can look at "Greenberg" as if it had time traveled from over 30 years ago with its washed out color palette (great work once again by Harris Savides) plus its editing choices that draw out moments uncomfortably and can appreciate that nothing else out there now looks or feels like this movie. You do need to see this, even if the experience will leave you a little bruised.

Greenberg was seen at the BAM Rose Cinemas.

The Work of Dede Allen (1923-2010)

2010-04-18T10:00:00.008-04:00

Here are excerpts from five films Dede Allen edited. They speak for themselves.

Memories of the Turn of the Century in Film, Part III: 2004/2005

2010-04-13T21:30:00.008-04:00

We now reach the midpoint of my series about the the 00's in film, focusing on the years 2004 and 2005. You can read the first two parts here and here. I am aware this is taking awhile, but let's face it. There will not be a whole lot of new movies coming out in the next six months that I actually want to see or talk about. (With the exception of a couple of films, the upcoming summer movie season has provoked nothing but my complete indifference.) So this blog may focus on the past for awhile and become primarily about older movies I have seen the first time or have recently revisited. That said, the final two parts of this series should be coming a little faster and this should conclude next month.

With this series, beyond discussing my favorite films, I am covering the significant changes concerning the various aspects of movies in the '00's. While the first part focused mostly on where the world of film was following a decade of generally superior quality and the emergence of many important directors and the second part focused on the deterioration of good manners from movie theater audiences, this part will focus on the significant changes in technology that has changed the art and craft of filmmaking. This will obviously be a little more tech-heavy, but, seeing how involved I am with the technology on the editing side, I consider this rather important in how it changed movies not only in the last decade, but for the long-term.

Around the midpoint of this decade, the concept that film can only be shot and projected on celluloid was beginning to be abandoned by even some cinephiles. I know. I was one of them, resisting the look of some of the early films being shot on digital video. Admittedly, some of those films did have somewhat of an amateurish stench to them, with poor lighting and pixelated imagery. In rare cases did the screenplays and performances help overcome the ugly aesthetic.

What does not get mentioned often that television has probably dictated the move towards features being shot on video. It could not have been a coincidence that television began to make its move from standard to high definition screens during this time. With more and more features shot digitally and home theaters being the primary way these films are viewed, watching films on television no longer was considered that dramatic a drop in picture quality. It certainly gives a good reason for those irritated with the audience members I described in part two to have their living room become their primary movie theater.

The evolution towards creating all digital features was an inevitability considering the changes in editing during the '90's. For years, films were edited on Moviolas and Steenbecks cutting actual celluloid. This is how I learned to edit film in my first year at NYU, a method of editing that many editors now consider completely tedious and frustrating except that it did discipline you to choose the right frame to cut on the first time, so that you would not have to restitch a frame if your first choice did not work. At the same time, video editing was comprised of synching two tape decks system through an elaborate edit system and cutting linearly, which was nearly as brutal.

It was during my last year at NYU in the mid-90's that I learned how to use an Avid, which would eventually be the primary system that most films and television shows would be cut on. For films, it provided a flexibility in the cutting, allowing you to change and tweak as much as possible, even creating multiple versions of scenes before deciding which to use. More importantly, as CGI became more prevalent in motion pictures, it made sense to establish a workflow to do post-production digitally as any effects shots would wind up needing to be scanned into a computer anyway. For television, digital editing was necessary if there was any chance of filling out the many, many hours of programming on the hundreds of cable channels out there. Of course, the style of editing also changed, as what became known as MTV-style editing was more a fixture in films with directors like Michael Bay refusing to allow a shot last more than 3 seconds.

Once films had established this new workflow in the '90's, you can imagine that this decade would eventually move into making the entire workflow from pre-visualization to production to post-production completely digital. This meant that the next technological advancements required making professional video cameras that would not only match but eventually surpass the resolution of film. We have had cameras from the Thomson VIPER FilmStream to the Sony CineAlta to the Panavision Genesis to the RED camera that have improved over time to the point where they are regularly used in a good percentage of the movies that get released in any given week with little attention paid to the fact that they were shot on video. This is a marked difference from just a few years ago when it was a big deal that Michael Mann would use the VIPER for "Collateral", a big-budget production starring one of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Now you may wonder where these three shots of Leonardo DiCaprio lighting a cigarette are from. They are stills (found on this message board) from a test shoot by David Fincher using the RED camera. The only lighting of this simple but effective shot comes from the match DiCaprio has in front of his face, which is enough for the camera to capture the details of his face and produce rich colors. There is also no noise reduction in any of these shots. One must consider the possibilities provided by a relatively cheap camera that can be used to capture images like this with probably a smaller crew and a lower budget that can compete visually with what is considered professional. The low budget aesthetic is less likely to be judged the fuzziness of its images, as the mumblecore movement was with most of those films shot on standard definition digital video. (Full disclosure: I have yet to see a mumblecore movie. I will get to a few one of these days...maybe.)

One other important aspect to mention is that these cameras have also evolved from being tape-based to strictly file-based with every take being recorded directly to hard drive. So when David Fincher makes his actors do 75 takes of any given scene, he could simply have them erase what he does not expect to use in the edit room. During this past decade, we also saw Apple's Final Cut Pro come to challenge Avid as a legitimate editing system for feature films. Final Cut Pro is a program that almost seems designed strictly to edit with files across the digital spectrum and also happens to be the edit system used by more and more documentarians who are grabbing their footage from a variety of sources. Not only that, both Final Cut and Avid have become packaged with other programs for sound mixing and visual effects that have made the DIY methods of no-to-low budget filmmakers feasible.

This is where the technology has, without a doubt, significantly changed filmmaking in a way that will be felt for decades to come. It has made filmmaking accessible to those with little money, who need to shoot with cheaper cameras and do their entire post-production in their apartment. Of course, the first argument that comes to mind is that the accessibility will allow more people with no obvious talent and even less to say the ability to make their movies. That is true, to a certain extent, but what is also true is that the percentage of crap to quality will generally be the same, regardless. The gatekeepers of Hollywood have allowed the hackiest of hack directors to sustain their careers, while the gatekeepers of festivals like Sundance have not hesitated pushing mediocrities that play it safe over films that actually take chances. Most films are not very good at either the high or low budget level and we will all be wading through it all to find the good stuff anyway.

What is important is that lower-budget films will, in essence, be allowed to play at the same level of Hollywood films visually, a big difference from how things were ten years ago. Of course, they will not have the elaborate lighting setups that films with bigger budgets will have, but the newer cameras allow for some quite beautiful images using only available light. Low-budget films no longer have to be characterized by the graininess or pixelation of their images, particularly when directors like Michael Mann seem to go out of their way to use video to make their images increasingly unpleasant and video-like with every subsequent film. Even larger budgeted films with riskier subject matter have been possible due to the capabilities of the newer cameras. Directors such as Mann, Fincher, Francis Coppola and Steven Soderbergh have decided to abandon film together. Even an old pro like Sidney Lumet has spoken out that he wished shooting on HD video would have come earlier in his career, considering how well-suited it is for the types of films he makes. It was not surprising Robert Altman embraced HD for his last couple of films as well. None of these directors make obviously commercial films, but shooting HD gave them a certain amount of freedom.

What changes will this mean for the visual aesthetic of films? I do not believe that it will be as significant as digital editing. Of course, we will have images that will seem more processed and clean or made grittier in post like "District 9". There will also be directors who feel that shooting on video means they do not have to compose interesting shots for the sake of capturing a false reality via handheld shakiness. The cameras are smaller and weigh less, so it is easy to throw over the shoulder and shoot or, as I called it, "keeping it real". There is also the issue that many directors out there were raised on watching television rather than learning their craft from feature films. Oddly enough, when one looks at some of the more acclaimed television shows today, you can observe they are shot in a more classical style and often even employ more striking compositions and a more measured pace than some of the more frantic cutting and camera work of Hollywood films. For example, look at any episode of "The Sopranos", "Breaking Bad" or especially "Deadwood" which have such a distinctive visual style with a camera that only moves when it has to and where every cut is justified dramatically.

As films and television are using the same tools, you can certainly argue that the line between them will be blurred. I do believe that the differences between them have become less significant over the last twenty years. This is not a change that has happened overnight. The responsibility of where this will lead us aesthetically lies with the filmmakers. It is important to acknowledge how the changes in technology over the past decade has begun to democratize the making of feature films. For this to be something viable, I would argue that it will be important for the independent filmmakers of this new decade to be artists and craftsmen if there's any chance for more original and daring movies to find their audience. Distinguishing between what will be perceived as professional to something that is perceived as amateur will be considerably more difficult visually. Artistically is another matter. Hopefully, all that will matter is the quality of the film and how less costly it will be to produce all types of films, particularly those with less commercial subject matter. Perhaps, technology will give filmmakers and more discerning audiences a choice. I know many will still lament the death of film, which I can understand. But, now, the definition of what film is has expanded to open up new possibilities.

So it happens a couple of the films mentioned in the movies I want to highlight for 2004 and 2005 were shot on video, one of which I already mentioned. I would also add that this was not the strongest pair of years in the '00's, as the film industry fell into a bit of a rut. During this stretch of time, we were treated to a trio of films that unfortunately reflected how filmmakers aimed for profundity, but wound up with simpleminded nonsense: "The Passion of the Christ", "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Crash". But these years were also significant for my having discovered the beautiful insanity of South Korean cinema, as several films from some of the decade's most interesting directors finally made their way over to the United States.

(In Order of Release Date in US, if applicable)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (dir. Michel Gondry, scr. Charlie Kaufman) (released March 19, 2004)

Much like "In the Mood for Love", this is another love story that I prefer to reserve for certain times and that I would rather watch alone. Unlike Wong Kar-Wai's film, this film deals with a relationship that has already settled into a certain level of complacency. For all the intellectual acrobatics of Kaufman's screenplay about whether it is worth retaining the bad memories along with the good ones, it was the scenes between Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet that were not afraid to show how bored two people can be in a relationship, even while still considering the possibility that they were still destined to be with one another.

It is a film about taking whatever you can from the people you achieve some level of intimacy. Love, regardless of how great it can make you feel, can also be the most painful experience of your life. Though, without a doubt, Kaufman is one of the most innovative screenwriters of our time, I felt "Eternal Sunshine" was the one screenplay of his where the mechanics of the plot were not just clever inventions. You really feel that Kaufman laid himself quite bare in this screenplay than in either of the films that Spike Jonze directed.

Michel Gondry's directorial style feels suited to the film's constant state of dissipating memories, employing a great deal of in-camera effects as well as properly-employed CGI to depict visually what Carrey's Joel is losing when the doctors he hires essentially fry his brain. The movie seems as if it were in a constant haze, shifting from one memory to another in what was quite an elaborately structured film. The final shot, repeated over and over again, leaves you with a sense of hope and futility that may be what love is all about.

Baadasssss! (dir. Mario van Peebles, scr. van Peebles & Dennis Haggerty) (May 28, 2004)

This barely-released film I actually consider to be one of the best films about filmmaking. In fact, it is so good that I have actually purposely avoided watching "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" because I don't think that film would be nearly as interesting a tale as how it was made. What's great about this film is that it portrays the entire process of making a film quite believably from creation to barely getting it released onto screens. Melvin van Peebles is depicted conceiving the movie during a drunken stay at a hotel that lasts for days. It shows him hustling for money at every opportunity, while gathering together a crew that actually believes in his crazy vision, even when they cannot stand being around him half the time.

"Baadasssss!" is also fascinating for how Mario van Peebles uses this film as therapy to work out what were clearly some long-running issues he had with his father, who he now gets the opportunity to play. In case you did not know the history, the elder van Peebles used his then 13 year old son to play himself in "Sweetback's" prologue which also happened to be an explicit nude scene when the character loses his virginity to a hooker. This film celebrates the spirit and historical significance of what Melvin van Peebles did with this movie, but it is not exactly the most flattering portrait. It is quite an incisive examination of the kind of personality that filmmakers have that can push away even the most loyal of friends and family members.

Collateral (dir. Michael Mann, scr. Stuart Beattie) (released August 6, 2004)

Strangely, as Michael Mann has subsequently made films that I have found to be increasingly reliant on empty visual flourishes and macho posturing, "Collateral" has been dismissed a bit as being a Mann film that was more conventional. As for myself, I actually consider this to be the only Mann film that ever came alive for me the last decade. I believe that working from a much tighter script than his other films actually freed him to experiment more visually. This was actually the film that completely convinced me that shooting high definition video brought a new and exciting aesthetic to filmmaking. One only has to see the opening montage showing Jamie Foxx's workday as a Los Angeles cabbie, the suspenseful club scene, the haunting night time landscapes to be convinced of that.

What is not given enough credit for this movie is that, unlike Mann's subsequent films, there seems to be some sort of emotional involvement with not only Foxx's Max but Tom Cruise's precise hit man Vincent. This was probably the last time Cruise gave an actual performance that did not seem to double as some sort of public relations gimmick for his stardom. This film is about sparking that moment within all of us where we are forced to take action. I always thought the key moment was when Max revealed his dreams to own his car service and that the hack job was just temporary only to reveal that he has held this job for over ten years.

The mood of "Collateral" overwhelms me every time I have watched it. The opening cab ride where Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith flirt and get to know one another achieves the romanticism that Mann has been struggling for since. It is also one of the few thrillers to truly create a sense of growing dread. It also works as one of the strangest buddy movies, as two characters help each other work out their long-term personal issues to one's benefit and the other's demise. I find the movie strangely inspiring for that reason, a self-help session with a contract killer.

Hero (dir. Yimou Zhang, scrs. Yimou, Feng Li and Bin Wang) (released August 27, 2004)

This film was quite the visual feast, shot by the great Christopher Doyle with heavily saturated colors used to represent different versions of the same events. While the kung-fu scenes are staged beautifully and Jet Li does a good job with his section of the movie, it is the love story that I believe has gotten short shrift. Once again, we have Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung showing the same chemistry in a love story, but told from a much different angle than "In the Mood for Love". This time, they play two highly skilled assassins who find their love tested by their differing political convictions. One of them wants the tyrannical king dead while the other believes the reason the king's actions have been for a greater good: to unite China by ruling over all the warlords that control the different territories.

There has been great debate about the politics of the film. Personally, I came to a different conclusion than the movie does about whether the king should have been killed or not. That said, I had no problem understanding why each of the characters came to their conclusions. The ending of the movie does not let anyone off the hook. Your empathy goes towards all the characters who all wind up sacrificing something dear to them. And that final piercing scream that Maggie Cheung lets out (you will know it when you see and hear it) shakes me to the core whenever I watch this film.

Sideways (dir. Alexander Payne, scrs. Payne & Jim Taylor) (released October 31, 2004)

I remember when this film came out that there were many accusations that critics gave the film a pass because the schlubby snob Miles played by the fantastic Paul Giamatti was simply a doppelganger for them. Well, some of us appreciated that the film would actually center around a person like this in the first place. You would think that a movie that actually depicts adults, who each display a certain weathered look, would be more appreciated during a decade when characters in the movies were increasingly young, pretty and boring.

Many have forgotten how funny this movie is. Just because Miles is a snob does not mean that the director or his film are snobbish. Much of the film depends on the chemistry between Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church. Although these two have very little in common, you can see how each of them embody the better characteristics that the other one lacks. The dialogue that Payne and Taylor write manages to feel both believable, while displaying a certain amount of literateness that is often lacking in modern-day comedies where the dumber and easier jokes are often the norm.

Having watched this again recently, I can still say the scene when Virginia Madsen's Maya knowingly describes Miles' personality through the metaphor of wine still works like gangbusters. As I have asked before, what has happened that has prevented Alexander Payne from making a feature film while his lesser imitator Jason Reitman has cranked out three mediocrities since "Sideways" was released?

The Incredibles (dir. & scr. Brad Bird) (released November 5, 2004)

This is the first Pixar film mentioned in this series. It was also the first one that began to break what was coming close to being a tired formula in their previous films. Brad Bird, who previously directed the cult favorite "The Iron Giant", concocted a superhero movie with a joyous spirit that may have only worked before in the original "Superman", as most films in that genre tend to work better for me when they are moodier and weighted with moral issues. However, Bird seems to have more on his mind that merely creating a new superhero brand, as this film continues the running themes throughout his work, where he seems to be obsessed with celebrating the artistic and talented.

Now, admittedly, there have been accusations leveled at the film that is elitist, which I believe, to a certain extent, is true. Perhaps, the film speaks to me a bit more, not because I consider myself unique, but mostly I believe we truly do live in a world that values the mediocre over the gifted. Remember how in the last election when some people wanted to paint Barack Obama's "elitism" as a negative aspect about him, while celebrating that the vice-presidential candidate on the other ticket was a complete imbecile? (This also happened to be the first film I saw after George W. Bush was re-elected.) This is what I think Bird is getting at with "The Incredibles", where his family of superheroes are shamed into living a life of conformity simply for being gifted.

I must add that, starting with this movie, it really did seem that each of the ideas Pixar presented seemed to spark some level of backlash which I think disqualifies the notion that these are formulaic popular entertainments being cranked out impersonally. Once Bird made this movie, you began to see the directorial visions behind Pixar's films become more distinctive, which I will delve into further later in this series.

Closer (dir. Mike Nichols, scr. Patrick Marber) (released December 3, 2004)

I have an interesting relationship with Mike Nichols movies. Outside of his HBO movies, "Wit" and "Angels in America", and particularly his movies about bitter relationships between men and women "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?", "Carnal Knowledge" and this one, "Closer", I do not really care much about the rest of his filmography. Even "The Graduate" I feel is more than a bit dated by now. When Nichols devotes himself to portraying some of the most brutal and acidic relationships ever put to film, I believe him to actually be a pretty brilliant filmmaker. I am aware that a good number of people were turned off by the stylistic dialogue in "Closer", but, like most Mamet, I was able to disregard its lack of realism when there is a certain level of poetry to the words that I cannot help but admire.

The film does not try to open up the play. Outside of its four main characters played by Clive Owen, Natalie Portman, Jude Law and Julia Roberts (in the only performance I ever bought her in), everyone else you see on screen does not have a single line of dialogue. But these are some great, searing scenes that are quite painful to watch at moments, as the characters alternately lie to each other, lay their souls bare and then finally rip each other apart. Owen's Larry is the character that comes off the most brutish, even responding to someone's question about why he acts the way he does by yelling out, "Because I'm a fucking caveman!". Yet, he is revealed to be the most honest of the group, while the others seem to get off toying around with each other's feelings.

As other movies that look at the most painful aspects of relationships, it may have hit a little too close to home for people to take. For some reason, this subject matter seems to bring out the best in Nichols. The rest of his otherwise lightweight filmography makes me wonder why that is the case.

OldBoy (dir. Park Chan-Wook, scrs. Park, Jo-yun Hwang, Chun-hyeong Lim & Joon-hyung Lim)(released March 25, 2005)

Although this is not the first part of Park Chan-Wook's Vengeance Trilogy, it was the first one to be released in the United States. Watching "OldBoy" was one of the most revelatory experiences I had in the cinema during the '00's. It made me reconsider what films were capable of doing and introduced me to South Korean cinema, which made a lot of what was coming out of America seem tired and old hat. There was a energy and inventiveness to the direction by Park Chan-Wook, who I consider to be one of the few true visual stylists working today. There was also a willingness to take the story to places that many would be afraid to go.

What blew me away with "OldBoy" is that it sets up such an absurd premise and then it takes it an even more insane conclusion, but there is an emotional logic to every action these characters take. The movie is about a man imprisoned by someone else for 15 years for reasons he does not even know. Unlike most American films about vengeance, this film shows the futility of the violence that comes about from it. Both our protagonist and antagonist are left destroyed by the end of the film, as well as any other characters they involve in their rage. You feel equally empathetic and repulsed by all of their actions.

Not enough can be said about Park's direction, which often fluidly moves from one scene to another and employs CGI in ways that is often expressive. You can pull stills from any scene in the film and marvel at the compositions. And, yes, the choice to film the infamous hallway brawl scene where our protagonist Dae-su Oh takes on an army of thugs with nothing but a hammer in one long unbroken take is pretty brilliant. I think it is the sign of a great director that he can deliver such brutal films about the ugliness of humanity and can still make them so compulsively watchable and beautiful.

Kings & Queen (dir. Arnaud Desplechin, scrs. Desplechin & Roger Bohbot) (released May 13, 2005)

I actually caught up to this only a couple of years ago because it was one of those movies that received the most perfunctory of releases in the United States. I have often said recently that Desplechin is one of a few directors that seem to be making the movies that Woody Allen would be making, if he gave a shit anymore. I loved the loose narrative of this film, as it splits in half to tell the stories of Nora and Ismael (played by Emmanuelle Devos and Mathieu Almaric in two fantastic performances) a good deal of time after they have been divorced. Both characters are dealing with crises in their lives. Nora is trying to care for her dying father, while Ismael has been wrongfully (or maybe not) been committed to a mental institution he is desperately trying to escape from.

There is not a lot of plot in "Kings & Queen" throughout its 2 1/2 hour running time, which is welcome. The film is mostly comprised of scenes observing these two characters having great difficulty dealing with their current predicaments. It moves so gracefully from drama to comedy and back again and Desplechin shows such a great love for his troubled characters. More importantly, he resists the urge to solve their problems with a cathartic climax that usually finds its way into movies like this. Desplechin embraces the notion that the characters are more aware of their issues and may connect with others in a more meaningful way. But, yet, they will continue to fuck up more in the future because they are who they are.

Batman Begins (dir. Christopher Nolan, scrs. Nolan & David S. Goyer) (released June 15, 2005)

A few years ago, I can tell you that the last thing I wanted to see was yet another Batman movie. The Tim Burton films, as usual for him, were art directed exquisitely, but still left a lot to be desired emotionally beyond Burton's usual attempts to impose a faux gothic sensibility on Batman. The less said about the non-Burton sequels, the better. Perhaps, due to Christopher Nolan deciding to unleash Batman on a living and breathing Gotham City as well as dealing with the repercussions of using vigilantism to combat terrorism (subject matter that seemed to only be acknowledged when critics discussed its sequel), there was actually something for me to grasp onto in a superhero movie.

Though calling it a superhero movie is considerably a stretch, as I never considered the Batman of Nolan's films to be all that upstanding. In "Batman Begins", there are many allusions that perhaps Bruce Wayne is not the most psychologically balanced individual and that he may not be dealing with his parents' death in the most healthy way. Though he may be doing this to fight for the good people of Gotham City, his questionable tactics often backfire on him, which becomes more prevalent in the sequel.

"Batman Begins" is also the rare franchise movie that actually makes the origin story dramatically worthwhile. Hollywood has had this disease with franchise movies to go back to every character's origin and fill the backstory with useless minutiae that serve as little more than winks at the audience, hinting at what to come. Look at the "Star Wars" prequels and J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek" for the nadir of this trend. Nolan does more than that. He uses most of the first hour establishing the ideologies that Wayne will wrestle with throughout this film and the next. It was the first time in any Batman film I began to understand what made Bruce Wayne tick. It seems that "The Dark Knight" overshadowed this film with the money it made and the insanity it provoked, although I do not think there is that big a difference in quality from one to the other.

Memories of Murder (dir. Bong Joon-Ho, scrs. Bong, Kwang-rim Kim & Sung Bo Shim) (released July 15, 2005)

Based on a true story about a series of killings in South Korea that were never solved, Bong Joon-Ho's film examines how the local police may have helped botch the case, along with the handicap these occurred during a different time when forensic police work was rather limited. Bong daringly decides to mix wildly different tones often balancing grim and violent scenes along with bizarrely comedic and satiric scenes. Much like the cops in its American cousin, David Fincher's "Zodiac", the film becomes about the overwhelming negative effect trying to solve the case has on those doing the investigation.

This is a haunting film about lost opportunities. From the first murder, you can see the mistakes piling up, as the possibility that the murders can be solved slowly slips away. As with all of Bong Joon-Ho's films, the filmmaking is precise and the pace is measured. You would not believe from the assured direction that this was only his second feature. I wrote more about this film recently here.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance (Dir. Park Chan-Wook, scrs. Park, Jae-sun Lee, Jong-yong Lee & Mu-yeong Lee) (released August 19, 2005)

Although this was the first part of Park Chan-Wook's trilogy, this was actually given a barely-existent release here in the States months after "OldBoy". The film is about the kidnapping of a corporate executive's daughter for ransom by a deaf mute man and his anarchist girlfriend. That description does not quite do the movie justice, as we watch one action after another lead to something more terrible happening. Park Chan-Wook creates quite a Swiss watch of doom that would make the Coen Brothers proud.

The filmmaking is nearly oppressive in its use of silence. There is actually no score to the film, so acts of violence and turns of plot unfold quite horrifically with natural sound. While the running theme of the Vengeance trilogy is how revenge destroys both the justified and unjustified is present, the approach here is more clinical than the other two films, as each character's figurative and literal demise is documented as if it were a scientific study of human fallibility. It seems fitting that the film cuts to its end credits while the last dying breaths of one character are heard on the soundtrack. This was a chilling work from beginning to end.

A History of Violence (dir. David Cronenberg, scr. Josh Olson) (released September 23, 2005)

The funny thing about this film is that it seems to have been alternately elevated and dismissed based on the whether one thinks the has anything original or worthwhile to say. I am not going to claim that this is the most artistic film Cronenberg has ever made, though I do not believe artistic intentions alone make a great movie, a concept that should have been brought up more in the past decade in film discussion. While Cronenberg's other films in the decade, "Eastern Promises" and the woefully-underseen "Spider" were worthy in their own right, I still felt this was the most satisfying. I found Cronenberg taking a less clinical approach to his subject matter loosened him up as a filmmaker.

This film makes some insightful points about violence in men and particularly how women react to them. I was always considered the two sex scenes in "History" to be the key to what Cronenberg was getting at. The first scene shows awkward but playful sex between a man and his wife, while the second scene, after he is revealed to have been a hit man in a past life, consists of hard, rough fucking that both of them have probably wanted to do for some time. How often are we outwardly appalled by violence but are secretly attracted to it, as we cannot help but admire when someone, usually a man, can wield power? I bestow much praise to Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello for making these ideas as well as their characters' behaviors believable.

I always considered the climactic sequence with William Hurt as Richie, the brother to Mortensen's Tom Stall, to be one of the few proper deconstructions of the gangster genre. Despite making a great deal of money, Richie just cannot leave things alone and still pledges to follow some ridiculous code to kill his own brother which then leads to a nearly farcical standoff in which we realize how pathetic these men who live by their code of violence really are. Since seeing "A History of Violence", "How do you fuck that up?" is a line that I often say to myself when incompetent henchmen in movies miss their mark.

The President's Last Bang (dir. & scr. Im Sang-Soo) (released October 14, 2005)

This South Korean film is a prime example of making a comedy in which no single character on screen realizes that they are in one. "Last Bang", based on true events, believe it or not, takes place during a 24 hour period in October 1979, when the long-time disgruntled Secretary of Intelligence Kim Jae Kyu decides almost out of the blue to plot and carry out an assassination of the dictatorial South Korean president Park Chung Hee. Considering how improvised the plot is conceived, it is not a surprise to see that it is carried out with varying levels of success and failure. Im Sang-Soo stages this from an objective viewpoint, fascinated by how each choice contributes to how the assassination plot resolves itself.

You genuinely feel the outrage of Kim Jae Kyu, but also question how wrong-headed he may be. At first, it seems like he is doing this because he wants to bring in a more democratic government, but, most of the time, he is revealed to simply be angry and depressed that he has to work for such a despicable human being. The movie reveals that political change may have come about from someone's mid-life crisis. There are also some great shots in the film, most of the memorable ones often surveying the madness from a roving overhead point of view, as the camera moves from room to room to keep track of all the characters. Yet, the tone of the movie is so reserved, playing out like a straight-faced farce with political maneuvering and gushing blood.

The Power of Nightmares (dir. & scr. Adam Curtis) (released December 9, 2005)

This three hour documentary originally aired on the BBC, but was given a very brief theatrical release. I actually saw it before its release by downloading it legally off the internet, although now it is available on DVD. There were obvious reasons why the film was not widely shown in the United States. Although perhaps perceived as something along the lines of those ridiculous September 11th conspiracy movies like "Loose Change", it is actually nothing of the sort. Instead, Curtis methodically goes back in history to trace the roots of both the neoconservative and radical Islam movements and how they seem to have a lot in common.

Obviously, there are going to plenty of people out there who do not buy into that theory. Nor are they going to buy into the idea Curtis presents that there really was no large network of terrorists called al Qaeda and that perhaps there may be many smaller groups of terrorists who happen to have the common dislike of America. They would probably also not believe the concept that perhaps the hysteria and xenophobia of both neoconservatives and radical Islamists may be feeding off one another, empowering each group to the point where a powder keg like September 11th happens.

But these are serious ideas, presented thoroughly. Curtis is a more effective and factually accurate propagandist than Michael Moore. "Nightmares" presented legitimate ideas that it seems most people are still too afraid to discuss.

Munich (dir. Steven Spielberg, scrs. Tony Kushner & Eric Roth) (released December 23, 2005)

Who would have thought that Steven Spielberg would make one of the best films that examined what happens when a country decides to use a terrorist attack as a reason to go after any of its enemies regardless of whether they had anything to do with the attack or not? I consider to "Munich" to be one of Spielberg's most unheralded masterpieces. A morality tale, as well as an effective 70's-style spy thriller, this film is about a group of assassins, led by a Mossad agent named Avner played by Eric Bana, assembled by Israel to take out eleven people supposedly behind the massacre of Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. What also works against these assassins is that, due to their lack of experience, every one of their missions are often marred by mistakes and often result in blowback for them and their country.

Each of the assassination sequences are shot and constructed as Hitchcockian set pieces, which is a testament to Spielberg's ability as a director, as this film was made and edited in less than 6 months. This is one of the most brutal films Spielberg has ever made, portraying vengeance through acts of violence that even sicken those who perpetrate them. The sequence where they kill the nude Dutch assassin using bicycle pumps is particularly rough to watch.

You empathize with these assassins, as they begin to doubt the righteousness of their missions to the point that the guilt overwhelms them. It is quite sad that the movie was greeted with derision from some factions, who feel that critiquing the actions of the government means that you condemn the country as a whole. As the bombmaker says in his final scene, "We are supposed to be righteous. That's a beautiful thing. And we're losing it. If I lose that, that's everything. That's my soul." That is why I can understand the choice that Avner makes at the end of "Munich". He chooses to protect and be loyal to his family rather than his country. As he finds out in the last scene, his country was never as willing to reciprocate his loyalty.

In the next part of this series, I will take a look at what I considered to be the peak years of the last decade, 2006 & 2007, before everything, both the movie world and the real world collapsed. Now, having chosen the subject matters that I was going to write about for each part of this series at the beginning of this year, I hesitate to tell you that the next aspect of the last decade I will tackle will be the actual discussion of films themselves. I think that by now you might be seeing the big picture of what I am doing with this series. Little did I know that the monthly "Death of Film Criticism" articles of recent years would turn into a nearly daily subject for film blogs and websites in 2010. I will press on, as I am confident I have something unique to offer on this subject. Plus, I actually plan to officially kill film criticism on this very blog and then perform an elaborate voodoo ceremony to make it rise from the dead, as something completely different. Yes, there will be blood.

Monsters Among Us: The Films of Bong Joon-Ho

2010-04-11T21:00:00.018-04:00

When I asked myself recently whether there had been any exciting new directors that started their career in the first decade of this century, I mostly drew a blank. Sure, there were some filmmakers who exhibited some interesting ideas in their first films, but have had trouble getting a follow-up film together particularly in this unforgiving economic climate or have simply whiffed at bat in their subsequent films. What has been rare is to see a filmmaker take chances with every new film, exploring different subject matter with a certain level of ambition or demonstrating a willingness to expand their style much from their debut films. To me, the sign of a great director has to do with how much further they explore with each new film rather than finding an identity and then repeating themselves throughout their career.

That is why I consider Bong Joon-Ho the most significant director to have started his feature film career in the aughts. Each of his feature films seem like mere genre pieces on the surface, but then you see a true humanist approach to his characters, who often feel like real people living in absurd worlds. His feature films range from a social satire to a police procedural to a monster movie to a morality tale involving crime and family. Even those descriptions do not actually do justice to what each of these films accomplish, as they often veer so wildly in tone (not just from scene to scene, but sometimes within scenes) that you begin to realize that Bong may not just be subverting genre, but may actually be creating a cinematic universe where classifying stories as thriller, drama, science fiction or comedy may be irrelevant.

Currently, Bong Joon-Ho's latest film "Mother" is being released around the country. (Unfortunately, like many foreign films today, the release seems to be more of a contractually obligated promotion for the DVD, which will probably drop a few months from now.) This seemed liked the best time to seek out the rest of his filmography, including his shorts, and explain why he is one of the few directors to have started within this century to make such a significant mark so early on. We seemed to have spent most of the last decade still talking about the major films of directors who started in the 1990's.

Luckily, as I was putting this piece together, someone recently posted Bong's student films on YouTube. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4) A quadrilogy of absurdist films titled "Incoherence", you can see Bong in a playful mood that has not exactly been missing from his feature films since. The first part, "Cockroach", is about a sexually repressed professor who sends a student to retrieve photocopies from his office where a pornographic magazine sits out in the open on his desk. This results in his attempt to beat her to the office to hide the magazine before she gets there. The second part, "Up the Alleys", follows a teenager who is mistakenly tricked by a jogger, an older man, into drinking a glass of milk from a delivery left in front of someone else's house, which gets him into some trouble. This results in the teenager going after the jogger for a futile revenge. The third part, "The Night of Pain", follows the aftermath of a drunken night between two friends as one of them attempts to make it home. The fourth part is the epilogue, which I will spoil in the next paragraph, so I would watch them at the links above before proceeding.

These shorts comprise little moments of amorality that are committed by supposedly upstanding members of our society. Granted, none of these are great crimes. Owning a pornographic magazine. Fooling someone else into stealing milk. Being a general drunken nuisance particularly towards one security guard. These are the acts of everyday assholes that some of us have to tolerate whenever we go deal with others day to day. However, their greatest crime has yet to be revealed until the epilogue, which consists mostly of a television screen showing these three characters as part of a panel show where they talk about how society has lost its morals and what should be done about it. Their hypocrisy is worse than any of their individual acts. At the end of the epilogue, Bong follows the three people these characters have wronged as they live their lives while their debate plays on television in the background.

Even in film school, you can see Bong Joon-Ho has an affinity for satire even if the message is a bit obvious. As with his later films, I marvel at the construction of these pieces, never letting you in what theme actually unites them until the final part. At first, they seemed like the many silly student films I used to see back in my NYU days, but I was surprised that a director at his age seemed more interested in commenting on the world around him more than just replicating moments from his favorite movies.

This sense of satire about Korean society carried over to his later films mixed in with other genres, but his first feature, "Barking Dogs Never Bite", is the closest in tone to his student films. This movie revolves, once again, around another professor, Yun-ju, who lives in a small apartment in a large complex with his pregnant wife. Bothered by a dog yapping outside, Yun, who works part-time, decides to lock it up in the basement which results in a series of events involving a couple of other dog murderers and a slacker of a woman named Hyeon-nam (played by Doona Bae, who was also the anarchist girlfriend in "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance" and the archer sister in "The Host").

"Barking Dogs" is one of the oddest films I have seen in recent times because it seems to build an entire commentary about the ways people want to conform in society around a series of events that are pretty ridiculous. Watching "Barking Dogs" seems like witnessing what happens when the styles of Jim Jarmusch and Robert Altman mated for a film to demonstrate how the rigid social structure of South Korea results in a great deal of unhappiness. Yun-ju may take out his anger on dogs, but his real frustrations are more about his inability to get a better teaching position while his wife carries the burden of supporting the family. It seems like society has told him one too many times that he is a failure because he has not achieved what he was supposed to at his age.

Hyeon-nam represents the opposite of what Yun-ju strives for. At first, you think this is a story about how these characters might meet and fall in love with the free spirit Hyeon-nam redeeming the more uptight Yun-ju. They actually meet sort of cute when she chases him throughout the entire apartment complex after he successfully kills a dog by throwing it off the roof. Thankfully, Bong does not resort to that tired device and turns the film into a meditation on how both these characters may want a different life and how they both come to different conclusions about whether it is actually worth it. Not to give too much away (no plot summary of this movie would ever quite capture what is going on here), the movie questions whether Yun-ju's goal of attaining a better teaching position would actually make him happier. He may genuinely love his wife and looks forward to having a baby with her, but he may have found himself in a position that society would more than happy have him stuck in.

Meanwhile, Hyeon-nam clearly has lived her life on the fringe, going from job to job and passing the time with her slovenly best friend. Even when brushing up against possible fame near the end of the film, at heart, she will never play along with conforming to society. Instead, Hyeon-nam continues to live her life the way she has, which, while imperfect, allows her to feel a little more satisfied and free. When watching "Barking Dogs", one cannot help but be reminded of Jason Reitman's alleged social satires which often seem to end with its outsider characters happily conforming to society or being punished for not doing so. There is even a significant shot at the end of "Barking Dogs" involving Yun-ju running until he is side by side with joggers that recalls the random jogger shots of "Juno". Except in this movie, they are not some cute visual device, but a commentary on a man trying to keep up with the pack, doomed to a fate of chasing success.

Bong Joon-Ho's next film "Memories of Murder" is also about something elusive, but represents a complete turn for its director into the crime genre. Made about four years before its American cousin, David Fincher's "Zodiac", "Memories" remains my favorite film from Bong, as not only does it work as a great procedural, but also is quite a damning depiction of South Korean law enforcement. The movie is based on the true story of serial murders that took place in South Korea from 1986 to 1991. The first detective on the case, Park Doo-man (played by the great Song Kang-Ho, who was also in "Joint Security Area", "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance", "The Host" and "Thirst") is revealed to be an almost cartoonishly oafish, loutish and generally incompetent cop. When evidence at the first scene is compromised, Park resorts to methods such as planting evidence and beating a confession out of an innocent (and mentally disabled) suspect to make his case. Should I also add that, despite this, Park is still the protagonist of the story and, despite Bong's depiction of his behavior, his character surprisingly deepens as somewhat insecure person who wants to do the right thing, but is limited by his intelligence and long-term bad habits.

Contrast Park's behavior with the seemingly more moral and smarter detective Seo Tae-yoon who is partnered with Park to solve the murders. For most of the film, Seo is depicted as the one interested in actually gathering clues and, at first, shows no interest in employing Park's thuggish methods. However, as time goes by and the frustrations from not solving the case build, Seo slowly devolves into a hothead who wants to enact justice on the one suspect who seems to be the most probable, while Park begins to realize that his own methods have most likely prevented them from ever finding the real killer.

"Memories" remains Bong's most haunting film, the first time he commits to making a drama, although I still believe that it is as much of a satire as his earlier films. Though he acknowledges the lack of resources to do a proper forensic investigation, Bong suggests that it was also the backwards thinking of the local police department that completely botched this case. The movie makes its two central detectives represent the two approaches that we all have witnessed to tragic events. The cerebral and the reactionary. There is one side who will break down the situation to find the truth, while the other side will lose all good sense to pin the crime on the first person who looks halfway suspicious.

The film, true to what happened in real life, refuses to give us closure on the matter, ending with the most likely suspect being let go due to his DNA not matching what was found at the crime scene. While Fincher's "Zodiac" became more a movie about obsession (and a great one at that), "Memories of Murder" goes in another direction, leaving us not only questions about who the real killer is, but how much the way of thinking from law enforcement in South Korea may have contributed to proper justice never being served. At the end of the film, the actions of the detectives seem to have done more longer term harm to others (especially that mentally disabled suspect and the cop Park used to deliver the suspect beatings) and particularly to themselves. The seemingly moral Seo nearly kills their final suspect regardless of the lack of evidence, while Park revisits the first murder scene many years later, making it clear that he still thinks the murderer is out there and, due to his initial actions, that person will never be found.

"Memories" was actually the first Bong Joon-Ho film I saw. Although his earlier films were more obviously comedies, I was surprised how broad he was able to play his humor in "Memories" while presenting some of his darkest material. As someone who has reviled the use of torture by my own country's government on suspected terrorists, I found myself often laughing at the extreme ways Bong depicts the violence against suspects and the casual manner in which evidence is planted. This is a film where the most brutal officer is shamed by his superior officer and gets into a drunken fight where his leg is impaled by a nail which results in its amputation. Something that is sad, but results from an absurd and just series of events. These moments represent what makes Bong so unique during these days where drama must be delivered straight-faced and every joke in a comedy must be explained. It is so refreshing to see a director who puts together scenes that dare us to laugh and be horrified by in equal measure.

Bong followed "Memories" with another crime film of sorts, a short titled "Influenza", which actually made me appreciate his visual choices as a director. "Influenza" (which can be seen at this site if you pay a monthly subscription) centers around the crime wave of a nameless man and woman, but told completely through security camera footage, as they each rob people in subways, parking lots and ATMs. A clear attempt to rob a bank results in one of the funniest punchlines Bong has delivered in any of his films. Now, I do not consider the film to have as much depth as his features, as much as I consider it an interesting exercise in style. One of the aspects of Bong Joon-Ho's filmmaking style that has gone unnoticed is his often formal setups where the compositions and cuts suit the story but do not call attention to themselves. He has a nearly unerring ability to place the camera in just the right place and make it feel as it comes from a more observational perspective. It is odd to see a director in this day and age who seems to be in such control of his shots, as opposed to giving a directive to his camera operators to shake the camera all over the place to create some false sense of excitement. There is a reason his films seem to flow so naturally despite some of the insane moments that occur in his stories.

"Influenza" seemingly falls into the category of movies that are supposed to be perceived as reality. But what makes the short work is the choice to use locked down security cameras to record the action, except in one case where the camera is set to automatically pan left and right intentionally frustrating the viewer who is missing some of the action going on. I feel this style often adds to the absurdism of Bong's films, as he never seems to cut or frame ridiculous moments as if they were a joke. You watch these two criminals on their spree, wondering how seriously we are supposed to take this. As with his other films, "Influenza" becomes a commentary on a society that callously creates these monsters. It certainly looks like the male half of the crime duo suffered a bit of a mental breakdown in the first scene where he is seen in a suit making a scene in a public bathroom. There is no more backstory to these characters than that, but they clearly represent how members of this society can easily just crack and take it out on innocent and unsuspecting people. The title of the short hints that this crime spree is something more like a societal disease. Perhaps, this is the result of the protagonist from "Barking Dogs" getting what he wanted.

Bong Joon-Ho takes his metaphor for society's ills one step further in his next film, "The Host", which is, one of the few times I can acknowledge the artistry in one of the most disreputable movie genres: the monster movie. The first moments of "The Host" show how the creature was created by a careless American scientist ordering a Korean assistant to dump chemicals into the water system. The creature makes an early entrance during an attack in broad daylight, taking a young girl, Hyun-seo, with him. Unlike other monster movies, the movie is not simply about monster attacks (although the one at the beginning of the film outdoes anything Steven Spielberg did in the "Jurassic Park" movies) but how the girl's family comes together to go find her. You can see that Bong Joon-Ho's interests are almost all over the place in this movie, as it seems to contain such a wide variety of genres and tones all within the same movie. It is science fiction, a dysfunctional family drama, an action movie, and a satire about government and society, as well as anything else you can come up with.

"The Host", much like its title suggests, seems to host everything Bong had done before and since, the themes for all of his movies crossing paths throughout this film. It is the first time that Bong would focus on family relationships that would extend into his latest film, "Mother", though that does not stop him from employing some of the more biting social commentary found in his work before then. The metaphorical monsters of conformity, corruption and hypocrisy becomes a literal monster in "The Host". Like Godzilla decades before and his short "Influenza", the monster represents how society's callous choices return to bite us all in the ass. The family in "The Host" is forced to do battle with something they had no hand in creating, but, in the end, two family members are sacrificed for it.

As in his previous films, Bong's depiction of authority is often derisive. He even has one government official in a biohazard suit perform a pratfall due to the unwieldiness of his gear. It is later revealed that the government perpetuated a hoax about a virus having come from the creature simply because they did not want to take any responsibility for having caused this to happen. When they perform a lobotomy on the missing girl's father, the slow-witted Park Gang-du, to shut him up, they cannot even do that correctly, as the operation hilariously cures him of his mental disability, making him more capable of facing off against the monster himself at the end.

The message is clear. The country does not have the best interests of its citizens at heart. A family is not only fighting a literal monster, but the monster represented by society's failures. Despite the government and the army getting involved, the monster is ultimately taken down by Park Gang-du, his archer sister Nam-joo and his former activist brother Nam-il pooling their collective talents. You can see Bong Joon-Ho employing his social commentary in such a deft fashion to also deliver his most emotionally accessible ending, an act of sacrifice that is sad and heartbreaking.

This open-heartedness in Bong's work extends to his short "Shaking Tokyo", which is the final movie in the anthology film "Tokyo!" (with other shorts directed by Michel Gondry and Leos Carax). This is the first time Bong builds his film around a love-at-first-sight narrative, which, of course, occurs within a world which has apparently gone to hell due to collective indifference. The film centers on a nameless, but funded, hikikomori (a Korean term for a shut-in), whose only connection to the outside world is what he can order from his phone. Every Saturday, he orders a pizza and then stacks all the empty pizza boxes in a section of his apartment. One of those Saturdays, when a woman delivers a pizza at the moment during an earthquake, causing her to faint and for our main character to fall in love.

The rest of the film becomes about how the shut-in tries to work up the nerve to go outside to find the pizza delivery woman, who, after admiring the hikikomori's life, decides to quit her job and go become a shut-in herself. Bong depicts our main character's journey, as if he were taking the first steps on the moon. When he goes outside, we discover that a good percentage of the population have become shut-ins. While I enjoyed the film, I do have to say that, while visually precise as Bong always is, it was probably the least surprising of his narratives. That said, he takes a unique approach to the not terribly groundbreaking idea that we all have to get out and live our lives. This idea also seems to set up the too close relationship between the main character and her son in Bong's most recent film.

At first, it seems like "Mother", about an older woman, Hye-ja (in a great performance by Kim Hye-ja), who is forced to play detective to get her son Do-joon out of prison for a murder he did not commit, is a story that reads so generic it may have been a television movie of the week. However, this is where Bong evolves further as a filmmaker, which 10 years into his already diverse career is unique amongst filmmakers in their first decade of work, as he turns his interests from society's monsters to those within each of us. Much like "The Host", his film focuses on a family, except this family only consists of two members who are completely dedicated to one another. Like "Memories of Murder", the movie centers around a heinous crime which results in one character trying to solve a mystery everyone else thinks is solved.

When watching "Mother", I once again appreciated how well Bong Joon-Ho can craft a story. Considering this movie comes out during a time when mind-bending twist endings are all the rage, how Bong shapes the narrative almost seems radical. There is one revelation right in the middle of the film that forces you to see the central relationship between the mother and her son much differently, while the narrative turn near the end of the film is almost shocking in how completely logical it is. Not once did I ever feel the turns in the story were just designed to manipulate the audience, but actually happens due to the myopia of certain characters. This was the ending I thought about when I took apart the logic of "Shutter Island" over a month ago.

Though, once again, Bong does not resist taking a few extra jabs at the incompetence of the South Korean police department, he actually moves away from greater social commentary to examine how far we are willing to go for our family, an idea he also dealt with in "The Host". It is a given that there is no one Hye-ja loves more than her son, but, by the end of the film, due to certain revelations, it becomes important for her to prove this by doing anything to protect him. Without giving the ending away, I will say that it is a genuinely disturbing one that, oddly, provokes some level of empathy for a woman who clearly loves her son this much. You cannot deny the extremity of her devotion, though her actions make you question what kind of person she is.

"Mother" suggests Bong Joon-Ho has shifted his focus inward, as it almost reminded me of the moral and ethical quandaries of fellow South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-Wook. This is actually the first Bong Joon-Ho film to be more outwardly stylistic (this is his first film shot in 2.35:1), employing dynamic widescreen compositions and noirish lighting. He often shoots his central character walking as a spec on a landscape, deceptively showing her as frail old woman fighting something bigger than her. It still has the odd tonal shifts of Bong's previous films, though they seem more like relief from the heavy storyline. The film begins with a strangely beautiful moment when Hye-ja seems to be dancing out in the middle of a field, practically acknowledging a camera is filming her in a moment of supposed solitude. The one time that Bong in his entire filmography employs restless camera movement is in the final shot of "Mother" and he manages to pull it off brilliantly. If more people had seen the movie, it would be a shot that would be more widely dissected and discussed.

What fascinates me about Bong Joon-Ho are that his films manage to be so varied in subject matter, but are united in theme and an assured directorial style that shows a clear auteurial voice. He manages to do this without retreading shots or plot elements from his previous films. This is a director who experiments within genres to the point where his movies transcend them. Bong represents what I believe more directors should aspire to be as movies move forward into a new decade. We have drawn the battle lines down the middle where the hack directors are one side and the newest potential auteurs who never seem to develop beyond their first couple of films sit on the other side. The reason I consider Bong to be one of the more important directors of our time because his classical sensibility is so unique during these times and he understands how to deliver a satisfying film without pandering to anyone's tastes. How many directors out there can make both a crime procedural and a monster movie come off equally as personal artistic expressions and great entertainments? Bong Joon-Ho is a filmmaker that I believe will last and I look forward to seeing what he will give us over the next decade.

The McQueen Persona, Part II: The Imprisoned Free Spirit (The Great Escape & Papillon)

2010-03-25T22:30:00.021-04:00

This entry is for the Steve McQueen Blog-A-Thon at Jason Bellamy's blog The Cooler.

In Part 1 of this series, I discussed one aspect of the McQueen Persona, the Righteous Rebel, in two of his films, "Bullitt" and "An Enemy of the People". I had admitted that both films were both rather flawed films that were elevated by McQueen's performances, but never quite pushed him as far enough in challenging that aspect of his persona. As we take a look at a different aspect of the McQueen Persona, The Imprisoned Free Spirit, not only are both films much stronger, one of which I consider a genuine classic, but they do quite an effective job at building McQueen's image while almost cutting him back down to size in a way that few parts designed for movie stars do these days.

I will reiterate that I consider McQueen more of a great presence rather than being a great actor. "An Enemy of the People" represents the most that McQueen has ever stretched physically, but most of the time he occupied what we consider the "Steve McQueen roles" in movies. As with most stars, movies were made to tailor to his strengths of being a rebellious, confident man of action. McQueen was not the first actor to come to mind as someone you would hire to bring much emotional sensitivity to the film. The parts tailor-made for stars that I often find the most interesting are the ones that subtly subvert their personas and undercutting the adoration that movie star roles often court.

What better way to take down someone a couple of notches than by throwing them into prison?

Directed by John Sturges, "The Great Escape" is a World War II film that takes place in a new POW camp that is supposed to contain the most troublesome prisoners from other camps. Think of it as an all-star team of escape artists being assembled together. Now, despite it being in vogue these days to make sure that World War II is depicted with gravitas and realism, "Escape" makes no attempt to be anything than a great entertainment, while spinning one hell of a yarn. The film dedicates itself to the most absurd process of making an escape attempt that will empty the entire camp of prisoners and convinces you that it can be possible, considering how far they get away with it.

"Escape" is not necessarily a Steve McQueen star vehicle, but has him as part of an ensemble cast with characters from different countries including some actors with shaky accents (I'm looking at you, James Coburn), all trying to exhibit how equally smooth and resourceful they are. James Garner as Hendley "The Scrounger" gives McQueen some serious competition in the Cool Department. McQueen does receive first billing, but his character plays a peripheral part of the escape plan. During the first 20 or so minutes, McQueen's character Captain Virgil Hilts, the most notorious of all the prisoners, starts scanning the camp looking for weak spots. For the first third of the movie, he makes a couple of more escape attempts and winds up getting tossed in the Cooler, the place of solitary confinement where they keep all prisoners after failed prison breaks. At one point, he is enlisted by Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett (played by Richard Attenborough) to make an intentional failed escape attempt so that he can gather intel about the area outside of the fence. Yes, he escapes with the intention of getting tossed into the Cooler.

These attempts lead to one of my favorite running gags in movie history. Each time Hilts is captured, the film cuts to a shot of the hallway leading to the Cooler where the guards walk McQueen, carrying a baseball and a glove while wearing an expression as if he had been sent to the principal's office for the third time in a week. The piece from Elmer Bernstein's score almost plays as both a tribute and ironic counterpoint to Hilts. When I think of McQueen, I consider his most iconic image to be that of Hilts sitting down at one end of the cell, throwing his ball to the other end and catching the rebound again and again. It is a pose that is heroic and rebellious, while also reminding us that this man is getting the piss taken out of him for his stunts. It is the ultimate image of a man's man not only accepting the consequences of his actions, but determined that he would do the same thing again when given another chance.

As opposed to the persona displayed in "Bullitt" and "An Enemy of the People", I feel there is a level of self-deprecation to McQueen's work. When you take away the righteous aspect of his rebellion, you wind up with a character who is not afraid to do some foolish things, such as his plan to escape with a fellow prisoner by digging with a spoon under the dirt like gophers, to gain his freedom. As McQueen also had a everyman quality to his presence, it is a little more relatable to understand someone who takes the blowback from his rebelliousness in stride and more than a little self-awareness. Hilts is a free spirit, a nonconformist whose imprisonment seems offensive due to his nature. After all, he was a pilot before he was caught. In the final motorcycle chase with German soldiers, Hilts performs so many stunts that you wonder if he only wanted to escape in the most flamboyant way possible. And, yet, he cannot make that final jump. Tangled up in barbed wire and still trying to touch the ground on the other side of the fence, he has been brought down to earth again, as most people often are, and is brought back to the camp for more Cooler time.

It becomes evident how McQueen's persona is undercut in this film during the final credit roll. Every time I watched this film, I could not help but laugh when they reach McQueen at the roll call of actors, which also lists each of the characters' specialties in the mission, giving Hilts the title of "Cooler King". Not only was it accurate, since being thrown in the Cooler was his main contribution to the escape, but he is shown there standing equally defiant and dumbfounded. When I watched "Escape" on the big screen for the first time last year with an enthusiastic audience, this was finally a laughter I could share with others though it was clearly one of admiration for that character. You knew once Hilts got out of the Cooler, he would make another escape attempt. You cannot keep a free spirit down.

While "The Great Escape" represents a certain tweaking of the Persona, "Papillon", made 10 years later, finds McQueen once again stepping into a role that requires him to be imprisoned for long periods of time while also attempting multiple escapes. Though I consider "Escape" to be a classic film, I feel "Papillon" was more of an attempt to de-heroicize the McQueen Persona further than the earlier film. "Papillon" is also a true star vehicle for McQueen with Dustin Hoffman and a couple of other actors being the only significant supporting players. McQueen is allowed to show more shadings as an actor than he has been allowed in other roles, even "Escape".

"Papillon", directed by Franklin J. Schaffner, aims to be a grittier movie than "Escape", which is undeniably about being a popular entertainment. It is based on the "memoir" of Henri Charriere who claims that he was sent to prison on Devil's Island for a murder he did not commit. The reason I am using quotation marks for "memoir" was due to the book being widely considered a hoax, as he actually submitted it to his publisher as a novel first and then later claimed it was autobiographical. Still, the story makes clear that anyone who tries to escape Devil's Island will be met with multiple year stretches in solitary confinement (thus, there is no clever name like "Cooler" given to those cells) and eventually the guillotine.

Much like "The Great Escape", McQueen's Papillon is already planning his escape from the start. On the boat ride to Devil's Island, he begins to trade favors with other inmates including Hoffman's Louis Dega. Though he represents the rebellious streaks of previous McQueen characters like Virgil Hilts, Papillon plots his escape silently, choosing not to openly defy the prison guards as Hilts did in the POW camp. When he observes a prisoner getting beheaded at the guillotine, you can sense a certain level of fear in McQueen's performance. He does not consider the consequences of being caught as lightly as Hilts.

Much like "Bullitt" in the first part of this series, I had not seen "Papillon" in well over two decades, so the movie felt completely fresh when I revisited it recently. I was pretty thrown that I found the film as moving as I did, a quality that I admittedly would not assign to most of McQueen's films, since many of them operate on his wavelength. The film has a somewhat off-kilter tone and mood to it that is quite distinctive from the more straight-ahead styles and rhythms of the typical Steve McQueen movie. The directorial style is not always in service to the McQueen Persona, although sometimes to its disadvantage. The dream sequence where Papillon, in a mock outdoor courtroom setting, is forced to admit that he wasted his life comes off as a clumsy stylistic choice and has the character announce his regrets as opposed to showing them. Still, I believe "Papillon" pushes McQueen to give one of his least conventional star turns and would rank it as one of his best performances.

There is a long stretch in the film that showcases McQueen's best work as an actor, especially how it recalls his "Cooler" scenes in "The Great Escape" from 10 years earlier. When Papillon does his first two year stretch in solitary confinement, the film actually devotes nearly a half-hour of screen time to really make you feel that time. This is a marked difference from seeing McQueen bounce a baseball off the wall in his cell. Instead, the film details how the guards give him slop to eat, a bucket of dirty water to drink and another bucket to use as a toilet. At one point, when the guards discover that someone (Dega) is smuggling Papillon a coconut, they punish him even further until he gives up who was slipping him the food.

The consequences of those actions shows McQueen at his most vulnerable. His clothes become more dirty and torn. He begins to age quicker than the time that has passed. At one point, Papillon is ready to break and comes close to giving up Dega, only to experience doubts by babbling incoherently. McQueen plays the tail end of this section, as if he is close to breaking down in tears. Unlike "The Great Escape", you truly see a free spirit get nearly broken and it is more painful to watch, as McQueen himself is such a powerful film icon. Though the role clearly fits into the McQueen mold, it demonstrates how often the strongest performances by stars like him are the ones that truly challenge their personas. In McQueen's career, I would especially point out this section in "Papillon", as well as several moments in "The Sand Pebbles".

The roles of Papillon and Hilts are fascinating to me because it becomes so much about these characters' inability to break free, which is why I refer to it as "The Imprisoned Free Spirit" as opposed to just "Free Spirit". It is a bit odd to see these star turns which are based on the main characters failing often and hard. Yet, Papillon and Hilts are not martyrs, but persistent in their desires to not be under any other man's authority. This persona of McQueen is one that is from its time, but yet it does not feel dated. In modern films, movie star turns have become almost exclusively about winning against the forces of evil, as opposed to celebrating the notion that just fighting the battle is worth it. But we live in simpler times when we must see evil vanquished on the screen.

A film where your movie star continuously fails to break out of a POW camp? Who wants to see that? A movie where your star has become somewhat delusional that he decides to float on a bag of coconuts across the sea and, by sheer luck, makes it to the other side without getting the chance to punish those who framed him? No way, not inspirational enough for these days. Although McQueen was more of a great movie star than a great actor, there is much to admire about most of the roles he chose to suit his persona. There was a certain distance from the King of Cool that shrugged off easy sympathy for his characters. His more righteous characters had the hint of the anti-hero in them. Even his free-spirited characters convinced you that freedom was something to be earned and fought for while not exactly being above playing dirty or exhibiting too much self-defeating cockiness.

While there are other personas to McQueen that I have not talked about, I believe that there is so much to be discussed about what he represented. Genuine movie stars like McQueen will be considered and reconsidered as time passes because we discover so many different aspects to his work, as well as seeing ourselves in him. You can see an actor struggling with the idea of making his emotions more visible. The fascination with McQueen is watching each of his movies to see what he lets slip out while equally still being assured by his sense of Cool. That is what makes McQueen a lasting film icon.

And now another song:

The Great Escape was seen last year at the Walter Reade Theater during the Steve McQueen Retrospective. Papillon was viewed on DVD via Netflix.

The McQueen Persona, Part I: The Righteous Rebel (Bullitt & An Enemy of the People)

2010-03-23T20:30:00.018-04:00

This entry is for the Steve McQueen Blog-A-Thon at Jason Bellamy's blog The Cooler.

I never considered Steve McQueen the greatest actor, as much as I considered him a great presence. One has to look at today's "movie stars" to truly appreciate what McQueen brought to movies that were, for the most part, mostly memorable due to him. He seemed to have a mature, been around the block quality even in his early thirties, while many present-day actors are more pretty and boyish even when some of them are approaching forty. He may have been considered too cool, and, by turn, too unemotional by some, but he still represents to me more how men really are or perhaps should be. Maybe, these days, pop psychology has infected male characterizations so much that I prefer some of the mystery that McQueen's opaque performance style offers.

For my two entries into this blog-a-thon, I will contrast two McQueen performances and films that have 10 year gaps between them. Most of McQueen's choice of roles had to do more with fitting a certain aspect of his persona than necessarily challenging his range as an actor. At first glance, you would think these two films could not be more different from each other, since the little-seen "An Enemy of the People" was made as a passion project by McQueen and renders him nearly unrecognizable under a long hair and beard. But there are some similarities between what some consider his most iconic performance and his least-seen one.

I had recently revisited "Bullitt", directed by Peter Yates, for the first time in about two decades and have to admit that the movie is almost a perfect example of how McQueen elevates what seems now to be a somewhat substandard film. McQueen plays one of film's early supercops Frank Bullitt, who is tasked by a politician (played by Robert Vaughn) with guarding a mobster who will be a witness for a Senate subcommittee hearing on organized crime. When one of his partners gets shot and the mobster killed by hitmen, Bullitt takes it upon himself to bend the rules to find out who was behind it and achieve his sense of justice.

Now, it does pain me to say this, but "Bullitt" is very much a relic of its time in style. There is little depth to the story, which leads to a lot of moments in the film that seem like padding to make the film reach its near-2 hour running time. When Bullitt's partner is operated on, the film spends about three minutes observing this, as well as Bullitt waiting outside in the hallway. Every scene with his girlfriend Cathy (played by Jacqueline Bisset) seems inconsequential until she is brought by Bullitt, for contrived reasons, to a crime scene and accidentally sees a dead body. This results in some halfhearted attempt to demonstrate that Bullitt lives in a violent world that she (and us) will never understand. It seems as if the story is attempting some sort of moral quandary about justice and violence, but the cop movie cliches are piled on so high that the film substitutes moving at a snail's pace and deadly serious facial expressions to suggest nearly non-existent depth. You can almost call it the "Miami Vice" of its day, although not as pretentious. It seems primed to be satired, as it was when Michael Murphy played a Bullitt-like character (complete with turtleneck shirt) in Robert Altman's "Brewster McCloud".

"Bullitt" coasts on the rebellious side of McQueen's persona. Even when his character is breaking the rules such as hiding the dead body of the informant away from Vaughn and his underlings, the movie is clearly on his side. He represents the moralistic holdout in a very corrupt world where the mobsters and the politicians are not to be trusted. McQueen does not talk much throughout the film, but when he does, he comes across more than a little self-righteous. Without any doubt, Frank Bullitt sees the big picture that everyone else is too short-sighted and amoral to see.

Strangely enough, I found myself admiring McQueen's work in the role, while not believing for a minute that this person can exist in the real world. Someone like Harry Callahan may be trigger-happy and flaunt the law whenever he pleases, but "Dirty Harry" actually presents his ideology in a way that you would understand and even empathize with though you may disagree with it. McQueen largely has to sell his character's ideology mostly on facial expressions and carrying himself with a level of confidence that suggests he came to his way of thinking through life experience. The problem I have with "Bullitt" is that the script does McQueen's performance no favors in making us understand him. Do we really understand Frank Bullitt any more at the end than at the beginning?

So, largely, the film, made at the midpoint of McQueen's stardom, seems designed to sell us his persona from previous movies, but does little to challenge it. Everyone in the film besides Bullitt's partners and his girlfriend are all suspect. Let's be honest. The character of Cathy exists more to prove how virile our hero is rather than seriously considering her discomfort with his line of work. To sell the Righteous Rebel aspect of McQueen, the movie itself becomes a bit of a macho posture, inferring Bullitt must be right because he's a man's man. A cop who is named after the lead that comes out of his gun has to be a serious bad-ass, right?

McQueen's characters have always had some rebellious streak in them, but what sets Frank Bullitt and Dr. Thomas Stockmann in "Enemy of the People" apart from his other roles are that both films are strictly about casting his characters as the sole voice of reason. These admittedly play into the idea that McQueen was protecting himself as a star, which would not be a new concept. Much has been discussed how Mel Gibson's roles often cast him as a martyr (who often gets tortured for his salvation) or how Harrison Ford found one role after another that cast himself as the protector of his family. That said, it is often when actors step out of their comfort zones that they do some of their most interesting work.

Steve McQueen's role as Stockmann in "Enemy" was seen by many as a stretch because he transformed himself physically to play a role in a serious work of drama by Henrik Ibsen. The film was produced by McQueen and made for very little money (and it certainly looks it). Warner Brothers barely released the film into theaters clearly because any McQueen film where he was not driving a car or riding a motorcycle or putting out a towering inferno would not be seen as heroic enough for his core audience. I am sure that some may have even considered him too limited an actor to even attempt pulling off a role like this.

The thing is McQueen acquits himself quite well in the role, never bringing attention to the McQueen persona, even if the role does share many qualities with it. Like "Bullitt", I believe the film is elevated by his performance, although the supporting cast is a little stronger this time around. I wish I could have enthusiasm for the film or even the play itself. Directed by George Schaefer (whose resume before and after has been television), "Enemy" is the story of Dr. Thomas Stockmann who has helped come up with the idea of building a health spa with a spring in the town that will help heal people. However, when he discovers that the water running into the spring is contaminated by the local tannery, he wants to blow the whistle on this project which puts him at odds with the town's mayor, his own brother (played by Charles Durning). Since the mayor does not want to lose the money this new project will bring to the town, he decides to undermine his brother (and, in turn, discredit his good name) and spread the word that the project would have to be put off two years and everyone's taxes would need to be raised in order to fix it. Sound familiar to anyone following the health care debate?

While understanding the film had a low budget, "Enemy" still has the feeling of being stage-bound. The cinematography by Paul Lohmann (who shot both "Nashville" and "California Split") has lighting that seems like you are watching a VHS copy of a televised play from PBS in the 1970's. As what happens with adapting most plays to film, scenes drag on with characters often announcing their conflicts while also struggling to make awkward entrances and exits seem organic to the drama. It does not help that while I admire the message of Ibsen's play, it was relatively easy to see where it was going. It stacks the deck so much in casting Stockmann as the sole truth teller.

The highlight of the film is the scene when Stockmann attempts to address the town with his findings about the spring but is thwarted by his brother and anyone else the mayor has in his pocket. One can see how this moment reflects how the most honest voices are silenced by the shouting mob. Once again, sound familiar? This scene also showcases some of McQueen's best work on his film, as he attempts to explain the importance of hearing every opinion on a subject, however much it pains people to hear that inconvenient truth. This is actually one of McQueen's most vulnerable moments on film, an actor usually dependent on gestures and stances using eloquent words to make his argument, while, deep down, we know that he does not stand a chance at talking some sense into these people's heads. This scene makes watching the movie worthwhile.

As much as something like "Enemy" seems on the surface to be a stretch for McQueen as an actor, he essentially represents the Righteous Rebel viewpoint in this, as well as "Bullitt". Stockmann and Bullitt are constantly told again and again that what they are doing is wrong. They essentially tell him that he is disrupting the natural order of things. In one movie, Vaughn explains to him that he has to learn to play the game and, in the other movie, Durning tells him to stop making waves and accept things as they are. These films represent the typical story arcs of the non-comformist, although I think "Enemy" does a better job at convincing us of Stockmann's independent thought. As much as someone like Bullitt is told to control himself, he pretty much runs rampant around San Francisco and does not have much hesitation shooting people or participating in a car chase throughout the city. It is easy to stand your ground when you have a gun and a badge (a close-up of them is the final shot of the film) and your superiors only slap your wrists occasionally.

What does this say about McQueen himself? Now, it is hard to suggest any motivations about why he chose these roles, as I obviously do not know him. However, it has been my theory that actors do choose roles as some sort of wish-fulfillment. In someone like McQueen's case, I think this was true a great deal of the time. Because he did not have the greatest range as an actor, he tended to act in vehicles that represented his innate rebelliousness and confidence, as well as his propensity for physical stunts, as something admirable. There is a lot of reason men during the '60's and '70's not only admired McQueen for being the King of Cool, but they wanted to be him. Films like "Bullitt" and even "An Enemy of the People" cast McQueen in a somewhat worshipful light. His characters are right from the beginning to end and everyone else is a fool.

In these roles, you can see McQueen almost believing in his own hype. Both films would have significantly improved if they had suggested some deeper shadings into Bullitt and Stockmann. What both stories are missing is a sense of doubt, not only in the main characters but those that surround them which makes for more obvious drama and does not allow McQueen to go a little further into turning these characters into more than symbols. Perhaps, in both cases, McQueen was trying to enhance his image, although one was one of his most commercial films and the other was definitely his least. While McQueen does do admirable work in whatever both roles allow him, I actually believe this side of his persona, the Righteous Rebel, gets in the way of truly delivering his best work.

And, now, a song:

In Part II (which I will publish before this blog-a-thon ends), I will discuss what I consider a more interesting side of the McQueen Persona, The Imprisoned Free Spirit, where I will focus on his roles in "The Great Escape" and "Papillon".

Bullitt was viewed on DVD via Netflix. An Enemy of the People is available from Warner Brothers as a DVD-R, which can be ordered from them directly.

Memories of the Turn of the Century in Film, Part II: 2002/2003

2010-03-15T17:00:00.021-04:00

In Part 1 of this series, I discussed how filmmakers had begun the decade searching for purpose and vision in a time of uncertainty. That slowly began to change, as the world evolved (or perhaps appropriately devolved) due to political, economic and social circumstances. The years of 2002 and 2003 saw filmmakers becoming more engaged with the world around them as the movies I discuss in this piece begin to demonstrate. However, this raises a question that we have been asking since then: Was anybody paying attention?

I ask this question because the moviegoing experience changed significantly for me this past decade from something I did out of anticipation to reaching the point where I came up with excuses for avoiding going to the theater and just waiting for a movie to be released on DVD. I can recall times from when I was younger that were special about seeing a particular movie. Nowadays, I can make lists of moments when a particular experience was ruined by an individual (or several) by them generally doing or saying something stupidly disruptive.

Now, you may wonder why I am devoting a part of this series to discussing this. I believe that the heart of the movie experience is the relationship between the image on the screen and each person in the auditorium watching it. Without a doubt, each of us connects to a movie on our own terms, but we also take part in sharing a collective experience with others when we sit inside of a theater. With the improved visual and audio quality of watching a movie on DVD and, now Blu-Ray, with a high end system, some of the most devoted cineastes are seeking this as a refuge from the collective experience. Sadly, I understand why they are despite believing that all films are best watched on the big screen. I can say that I probably go out and watch about slightly more than half of the movies I used to about ten years ago. The collective experience of filmgoing has burned me too many times.

How did it get this way? I understand people have talked during movies for decades. I also understand that aging from my mid-20's to my mid-30's may have made me more sensitive to dealing with others who act as if the movie theater is their home. There is this sinking feeling I get that many people out there consider the movies to not be much different than theme park rides, a place to go for cheap thrills while not being asked to be emotionally engaged with your "entertainment". The lack of consideration of today's moviegoers has also been aided by technology, as some seem to not understand that their cell phones and blackberries do not need to be on at all times. I often ask myself when being disrupted by inconsiderate moviegoers why they paid so much money (as movies are not cheap these days) when they show little interest in watching the movie.

I do not want to direct these complaints at just younger moviegoers, as I feel there has been a system wide breakdown, if you will, of self-control that, not surprisingly, got worse during a decade of increasing narcissism. People of all ages went inside a movie theater, not caring that their vocalizations of opinions disrupted others as long as their experience was fulfilled. I can recall when teenagers during a screening of "Batman Begins" at the 42nd Street E-Walk in Times Square mouthed off throughout the movie so much that I still count my viewing of the movie on DVD as the first time I actually saw it. There were also those too cool for the room deriding the restored version of "The Good, The Bad and the Ugly" at the Film Forum, one of the few repertory theaters left in New York City. A theater that you would think would be a haven for film enthusiasts suddenly became a venue for the cooler-than-thou set to snicker at movies from the past.

When seeing "Amores Perros", two men who walked into the movie 15 minutes late (not a good idea for this film), sat right next to me and asked me to explain what happened up until that point. Then, they proceeded to make condescending comments throughout for a movie they could not be bothered to show up on time for. At the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas which attracts, how shall we put this, an older crowd, the opening shot of "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead" where Phillip Seymour Hoffman plows Marisa Tomei from behind elicited gasps of outrage and shock that never seemed to end until Ms. Tomei kept her shirt on later in the movie. At the very same theater, my brother witnessed a screening of "Rescue Dawn" interrupted by a supposed Vietnam Vet having flashbacks. While watching "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus" a couple of months back at one of the city's best theaters, the AMC Loews Lincoln Square, I had to endure a running commentary from someone behind me during the entirety of the film because he hated it. I was not crazy about the film either, but I do not expect everyone around to want to hear me riff on why I did not like it because, perhaps, I considered the possibility they might be enjoying it themselves.

I can go on and on with this list. The negative memories of moviegoing in the 00's are more numerous and vivid than the positive ones. My favorite moments are almost exclusively screenings at the New York Film Festival where nearly everyone in attendance seems to be there for the love of films and actually bother to know the names of the filmmakers. I do not expect everyone out there to see movies just for the sake of art. I certainly do not, as I try not to draw the line between art and entertainment. What bothers me more is that I do not really believe many out there are actually paying attention to what is being projected on the screen before their eyes on even the most basic level.

Although it has been said that today's audiences process information more quickly, I would argue that very little of that information is being absorbed very well. No matter how much simpler and dumbed down films have gotten, there has been an increasing number of people who simply do not understand what is going on. I tend to notice how the simplest plot points seemed to elude most people's grasps, based on the constant whispered questions I hear out of earshot. If someone is distracting themselves by talking to someone else or texting or whatever, they may be looking up at a screen, but they are not watching that screen. It seems they refuse to believe that movies engage the ears and the brain, not just the eyes and the mouth.

What does that result in? We have movies that cater to these audiences with often simplistic plot lines that are over-explained in between long stretches of visual gimmickry designed to retain their attention. It has become about movies dying to please those who do not really care about them. When someone goes to the movies to talk, text, or act ridiculous, they are disengaged with the entire concept of appreciating creativity, but see moviegoing as an activity, something to fill the dead spaces in their lives. If they talk out loud during the movie, they only care about bringing attention to themselves. As I mentioned before, it has been a decade of increasing narcissism and it has invaded the way many choose to behave at our theaters. I fear that this disconnect between the screen and the audience will further erode the quality of movies, while some of us who treat the cinema as a church will wonder where we belong when our place of worship is replaced by an amusement park.

I know that some of you now may think I am engaging in some prime Get Off My Lawn-level soapboxing. But while I have doubts about where the relationship between movies and audiences is heading, there is still a need to see vital movies whether independent, Hollywood or foreign on the big screen. As much as I think home systems have improved the quality of the film presentation, a television screen is only so big to see every detail and the scope of many films can be lost. Though, sadly, many of Hollywood's mainstream filmmakers became more careless in their craft throughout the decade which made seeing their films on the small screen (or not at all) not much of a loss.

The years I cover in this part, 2002 & 2003, represent the last strong run of consistent quality Hollywood filmmaking, as foreign films were continually innovating and iconoclastic American directors tended to work at the fringes of the system. During this time, which covers the aftermath of September 11th and the run-up to the Iraq War, I would argue there was never a shortage of moments that demonstrated people were not thinking about what they were watching, reading or being told, which carried over into their moviegoing habits. It was a time marked by xenophobia and hysteria with few thinking that the swift actions we took would have long-term consequences that we would still be dealing with today. If many did not think twice about supporting a needless war that would result in thousands of people getting killed, then why would anyone even consider how whipping out a cell phone to text someone in the middle of a film is going to irritate other people around them?

(In Order of Release Date in US, if applicable)

Y Tu Mama Tambien (dir. Alfonso Cuaron, scrs. Cuaron & Carlos Cuaron) (released March 15, 2002)

This is the perfect movie to start us off. A road trip in Mexico featuring two dim, horny young men and an older married woman results in a movie that is hilarious, touching and frank about sexuality. Throughout the film, an omnipresent voiceover details the backstories and the future of the peripheral characters, as well as Mexico itself. This could have easily been a sex story told in a vacuum, but shows how the culture of the country shapes these characters.

Not enough has been said about Maribel Verdu's performance in this film. Obviously, she is a beautiful and sexy woman, but she conveys the pain and loneliness of Luisa, who is stuck in her final days trying to experience something that resembles love. Her final phone call to her husband is a powerful and wrenching scene.

As in another Cuaron film that will come up in a later installment of this series, this was a film that demonstrated the long take, during a time when shots are cut down to seconds, is just as viable an option in producing cinema that is alive.

Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (dir. Zacharias Kunuk, scrs. Kunuk, Paul Apak Angilirq, Herve Paniaq & Pauloosie Quiltalik) (released June 7, 2002)

I was quite surprised I did not see this film on more end of the decade lists. A retelling of an Inuit legend shot on Digital Betacam, in what was clearly sub-zero temperatures, I would make the claim this movie is probably what mainstream Hollywood films like "Avatar" attempt to do, but often fail at: the telling of a mythological tale. "Atanarjuat" does not have a complicated story to tell and its morals can be boiled down to a few basics, but it is what details and the passion the filmmakers invest the story with. This was not a film that went through the motions of mythmaking, but humanizes the obviously symbolic characters so that the parables have some weight on each of us who watch it. It is a film about jealousy, murder and sex, so who could not relate to that even if it takes place in a culture unfamiliar to most of us.

I also believe that its central action scene is still one of the best of the 00's, when our main character is chased by three men trying to spear him over long stretches of icy terrain, made even more absurd due to Atanarjuat being completely naked. I can honestly say that, in our times of CGI, there was probably not another action scene that asked that as much from its performers. I feel this has become of the best forgotten movies of the last decade and hope many are not put off by the culture it portrays or its 3 hour runtime. This is committed filmmaking with obvious limited means, but still a very rich experience.

Minority Report (dir. Steven Spielberg, scrs. Scott Frank & Jon Cohen) (released June 21, 2002)

Another of several Spielberg films I have included in this series, this is a top quality fusion of science fiction and noir. This film may be one of the more accurate depictions of what will happen late this century. I can imagine a world where people are identified by eye scans, which are then used to cater advertising to them when they walk out on the street. I even imagine the computer where they sort the precogs' thoughts to be the future version of film editing.

I appreciated how Spielberg was able to balance such a timely subject matter about the lengths society goes to when fighting crime with the necessities of a commercial action movie. This film also contains some of Spielberg's most striking shots. One centerpiece sequence has the spiderbots released inside a building going into every room to scan people's eyes while they are in the middle of fighting or having sex all shot from CGI-assisted overhead. Also, I loved the way how Tom Cruise's character John Anderton and Samantha Morton's precog Agatha function as one whole person when they go on the run together.

While "A.I." was a film about a robot wanting to feel like a real person, this film was about how human beings needed to stop thinking like robots. When you think the solution to a problem is being handed to you, you have to recognize that the ever-present flaws of the human beings who create the system always has to be factored into the equation.

Road to Perdition (dir. Sam Mendes, scr. David Self) (released July 12, 2002)

Though the mention of Sam Mendes seems to send online critics into fits of conniption, I would argue that, at his best, he understands the use of mood, texture and overall style to create a film that can be a rich experience. This was his follow-up to "American Beauty", which employed style in the service of a screenplay that often descended into sitcom theatrics. "Perdition" is a story of revenge, as a hitman named Michael Sullivan (played by Tom Hanks) seeks to kill the man who murdered his wife and youngest child.

I do believe there is more to the movie than Conrad Hall's great cinematography. What could have been just an exercise in gangster movies is turned into a story about how the idea of maintaining the purity of one's family amidst such a dirty business is an impossibility. That Michael Sullivan and his eldest son are only able to truly bond when they set off to enact revenge says much about that world. Realizing on this journey that perhaps he had been better off being a role model to his son rather than taking the position that he had to provide for his family, the story becomes about keeping at least one soul pure during the most corrupt of times. You will see this theme pop up more and more throughout the decade.

Bloody Sunday (dir. & scr. Paul Greengrass) (released October 4, 2002)

This recreation of the infamous day in 1972, when a peace march in Ireland ended with the British killing many Irish protesters, became one of the most influential, though underseen, films of the decade. This was where Paul Greengrass started employing his documentary-style aesthetic of handheld cameras with propulsive editing rhythms that would cut fragments of shots together to create a surprisingly seamless whole.

While the film clearly sympathizes with one side, it does not shy away from demonstrating that some of the Irish people who came to a protest (that was meant to be inspired by Martin Luther King's civil rights marches) looking for a fight. The situation created a snowballing chain of moments that resulted in 14 Irish people dying at the hands of the British soldiers, who were clearly looking for a reason to fight themselves.

One of the great scenes is the speech delivered at the end by Ivan Cooper (in a terrific performance by James Nesbitt) where he scolds everyone for creating what will be a war between two violent factions: the IRA and the British army. It is sad to watch a man's idealism get crushed as, once again, another political dispute is settled with fists and bullets in which neither side will give for many years afterwards.

Bowling for Columbine (dir. & scr. Michael Moore) (released October 11, 2002)

This is one of the movies I have included in this series that I feel I will have to duck and cover from the outrage that Moore usually inspires in so many people. Am I picking this film because I believe every single thing that is presented in it? Should I be scolded for thinking this is a great film even though its perception of being a fact-based documentary is questioned? Well, first off, I will state this plainly in filmmaking terms, as to why this is not a terribly relevant challenge to the movie's quality. All, I mean all, documentaries are manipulated and edited in such a way to serve their themes. Since none of those films are directed by a visible political partisan by Moore, they are not subjected to even a fraction of the scrutiny. Does this excuse the more problematic aspects of the film? No, it does not, but it also does not affect how impassioned and insightful the movie is when examining its subject matter.

Many often forget how the film was probably intended to be propaganda (and I do admit, propaganda is what Moore makes) about the importance of gun control. What I think the movie is truly effective at is showing us how violent America is, compared to other countries around the world that have as little restriction on their weapons as we do. At his best, Moore is an expert filmmaker, finding not only the right moments in interviews to make his point, as well as knowing when to inject some much-needed black humor. He and his editors are also expert in structuring the film with the right employment of stock footage, music and even animation.

The filmmaking I believe is what is key to the success to a Moore film. Do I subscribe to his point of view? Sometimes I do and other times not, though I also believe his films rise and fall on the level of filmmaking he brings to them. I wish people would see the movie for what it is about than about the man himself. Although I acknowledge the issues one may have with the film, I do not take exception to one aspect that has been criticized ad nauseam: the Charlton Heston interview. If people are complaining that Moore took advantage of a sick old man, then one must wonder why a sick old man was elected to be the president and main spokesman of the NRA for five years from 1998 to 2003. You would think the man chosen for that position would be able to handle himself in even an ambush interview, as some have characterized it, and not suggest that "a mix of ethnicities" resulted in this country becoming more violent. There was no amount of fancy editing to suggest he was provoked into that statement and it all too obviously demonstrates how ignorance and fear (as opposed to "The Matrix" and "Grand Theft Auto") often lead to violence, Moore's primary thesis which was proven to be prescient about the 00's.

Talk to Her (dir. & scr. Pedro Almodovar) (released November 22, 2002)

How can such a beautiful movie be made from subject matter that certainly tests the viewers' acceptance of a character who does something shockingly sickening out of love? Pedro Almodovar has invented some of the most bizarre narratives in film with only Charlie Kaufman in his league. As always, Almodovar gives us such memorable images, such as two women who are in states of catatonia, bull fights bursting with color and even inserts a silent short into the middle of the film where a man shrinks and crawls into his lover's vagina.

The central character, Benigno (played by Javier Camara), who seems to act like a man who has never quite matured out of adolescence, inspired much debate in regards to his actions. The film asks you to understand the extremes he takes to be with the love of his life, Alicia (played by Leonor Watling), while also recognizing that he clearly is not mentally stable. It also happens to be a great film about friendship between Benigno and Marco (played by Darío Grandinetti), who each display a sensitivity that is rarely depicted in male characters in movies.

Rabbit Proof Fence (dir. Phillip Noyce, scr. Christine Olsen) (released November 29, 2002)

This film was based on a true story about three partly aboriginal girls who are taken from their homes and mothers by the Australian government. They manage to escape and walk thousands of miles back with trackers trying to recapture them. The reason they are taken is due to the government attempting to whiten the gene pool, eventually wiping out the darker aboriginal genes over several generations. It is quite shocking for this government to have enacted a program that essentially owes its ideology to Adolf Hitler.

This film is an example of how to do a social cause film effectively. Shot beautifully by Christopher Doyle, the movie chooses to tell its story through widescreen imagery and action. The three girls are often framed as small figures amongst the tough landscapes. The film trusts that the situation will trigger your outrage about the injustices of the Australian government and does not attempt to preach its message. It is simply a film about a journey of three children.

Noyce has been a journeyman director for the most part and sometimes taking on paycheck gigs for films he offers little more than visual flair. I was surprised that he had such an emotionally gripping film in him and wish that he would bring his eye to material that inspires him as much as this clearly did. This almost seems like a forgotten film from earlier in the decade, but hope that it is revisited in the future.

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (dir. Peter Jackson, scrs. Jackson, Fran Walsh, Phillippa Boyens & Stephen Sinclair) (released December 18, 2002)

Although it is tough to be a middle film in a series designed to be told in three parts, Jackson's second film in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy has much more of an epic scope than "Fellowship". What was also notable about the film was the first and, so far, the only computer-generated character to truly become a compelling and three-dimensional presence on film. Gollum, based on the performance on Andy Serkis, is not merely an effect, but someone who demonstrates both weakness and evil due to being possessed by the ring. Strangely, at moments, you feel a certain level of pity for the character even when his trustworthiness is uncertain.

One cannot forget to mention the battle of Helms' Deep that ends the film that must be appreciated for setting the bar of large-scale, CGI-assisted battles in film that only the subsequent film in the series matched. It is rare in films like these where the action actually builds and where you see some genuine strategy between the opposing armies onscreen. Many films that followed were simply content with all CGI battles that did little beyond cluttering the screen. Once again, I must mention how much we have to appreciate the artistry and care that Jackson brought to this trilogy.

25th Hour (dir. Spike Lee, scr. David Benioff) (released December 19, 2002)

This is actually a late edition to this list. I had seen Lee's film when it was released and considered it an effective drama, but not much more. However, a recent viewing spurred on by its inclusion on many other decade lists, resulted in such an emotionally draining experience this time around. I would assume that I originally saw the movie as being just about a drug dealer about to go to prison for seven years. This time, the movie became one of the best films about my hometown, New York City, and about how those of us who live here love it and hate it with equal measures even after the attacks on September 11th.

Obviously, the sequence where Monty (played by Edward Norton; what's happened to him since?) addresses his reflection in a bathroom mirror recalls the infamous racial slur sequence from "Do the Right Thing". The thing is any line of Monty's monologue is something any random New Yorker is thinking on any given day. One has to be impressed with all the stereotypes and neighborhoods he nailed in a few minutes, but, eventually, that anger is directed at his friends, family and especially himself. He could direct his anger at everybody else, but he has to eventually take responsibility for the path he chose in life.

If there is a section the film that elevates "25th Hour" more, it is the final sequence, narrated by the great Brian Cox playing Monty's father as he tells the alternate story of Monty if he chose to run instead of going to jail. That final 10 minute section is what happens when a film is able to achieve a certain level of poetry with carefully chosen words and images. This film haunts me.

Catch Me If You Can (dir. Steven Spielberg, scr. Jeff Nathanson) (released December 25, 2002)

The better of the two top-shelf Spielberg films of 2002 is a movie that is almost dismissed for being lightweight. One of Spielberg's main themes in films since early on is dealing with broken families, having had a childhood when his own parents divorced. Admittedly, I always found Spielberg's attempts to deal with families in his films to be often a bit trite and unwilling to truly illustrate the pain that happens when a family comes apart. "Catch Me If You Can" was the film where I thought Spielberg finally got it.

Of course, on the surface, the movie plays like a caper about Frank Abagnale Jr. (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), who blossoms into an effective con artist right after the divorce of his parents. On that level, the film still works great, as we follow an FBI agent (played by Tom Hanks) come close but is not quite successful in arresting him. Even for a caper, the film does not attempt to overdo its twists, as Abagnale's cons seem to be more about revealing his loneliness and sadness than necessarily being clever and rich.

The heart of the film is the relationship Frank has with his father (played by the always fascinating Christopher Walken), who demonstrates he is great in encouraging his son's creativity while not all that fantastic at reining him in when he goes too far. The scenes between DiCaprio and Walken have such spirit and then eventually sadness that Frank Sr.'s death, which, when revealed, is not milked for tears as Spielberg has been guilty of in the past, actually created a lump in my throat. I actually consider this one of Spielberg's most touching films, perhaps because he was not trying so hard to make it one.

The Pianist (dir. Roman Polanski, scr. Ronald Harwood) (December 27, 2002)

It had been a long time since I showed any interest in a Polanski film, as he seemed to be putting out underwhelming thrillers every few years. Based on the life of Jewish pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman in Poland during World War II as well as probably taking some inspiration from his own childhood, this was the most engaged Polanski film since "Chinatown" with a great central, silent film-like performance by Adrien Brody.

Having watched the film again recently, I was appreciative of how unsentimental the film is considering the subject matter. Polanski chooses to make a film about how one man survived with a great deal of luck and some ingenuity. The film is not afraid to show not only cruelty from Nazi soldiers, but also the Jews within the ghetto. It does not become a lesson about what an atrocity the Holocaust was, but how even survival does not bring out the best in anyone. Someone like Szpilman manages to live with help from both Jews and Germans, but there is no satisfaction to his survival. That he gets to live with help from his piano playing while the rest of his family is sent to concentration camps seems almost a cruel joke. This is a powerful film that does not lot anyone off the hook.

City of God (dirs. Fernando Mereilles & Katia Lund, scr. Bráulio Mantovani) (released January 17, 2003)

I find this film an anomaly as the subsequent films by Mereilles were quite underwhelming, but this was one of the best crime epics of recent times. The ambition to show the cycle of crime in Brazil over the course of three decades cannot be denied. The majority of the characters are teenagers trying too hard to act like adults because they believe easy access to guns makes them men. They have grown up in a society that sees violence as a way to solve its problems, combined with the fact that most of these poverty-stricken people see life as something disposable, not just in others, but themselves as well.

This is alive filmmaking, employing aggressive handheld cameras and a more jagged editing style to show a world that becomes increasingly chaotic. Violence results in more violence, while the government chooses to do nothing about it. Even seemingly decent people like Knockout Ned (played by Seu Jorge, who would later be singing David Bowie songs in "The Life Aquatic") succumbs to the ugliness of his surroundings when a crime lord Lil' Die (intensely played by Douglas Silva) rapes his girlfriend and kills several members of his family, just to demonstrate his power.

If there was ever a film that illustrates how society breaks down when nearly everyone lives in extreme poverty, it is this one. Those of us who live relatively comfortable experiences can watch this film and be thankful that we have things much easier.

The Magdalene Sisters (dir. & scr. Peter Mullan) (released August 1, 2003)

This is one of the great unsung films of the decade, directed by character actor Mullan who you probably remember from playing creeps in "Trainspotting" and "Children of Men". Based on true events about how the church of Ireland ran asylums for decades that used women for hard labor. The reasons women were sent there were mind-boggling, as some were raped, got unexpectedly pregnant when young or were just simply attracting too many men with their beauty. Basically, they were punished for the way their sexuality was being perceived by men.

Like "Rabbit-Proof Fence", this was a film that truly outraged me, as it shows the nuns and priests at the asylum constantly abusing the young women to show off their power. These men and women of God use their religious status to essentially get away with murder. The film also does not shy away from showing how well the church profited from these women with Sister Bridget (played by Geraldine McEwan in one of the great villainous performances) constantly counting all the money coming in, in between delivering vicious beatings.

If there was one line I will never forget, it is what comes repeatedly out of Crispina's (played by Eileen Walsh) mouth after it is revealed publicly that one of the priests has been raping her: "You are not a man of God!" Perhaps, I am judging this movie through my own skepticism about religion, but you have to admit that this film certainly warned us of the power given to religious extremist hypocrites that has plagued the world in the 00's.

American Splendor (dirs. & scrs. Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini) (released August 15, 2003)

Yes, it is okay to be a touch misanthropic, as long as you offer some insight into the world. This film, which tells the story of underground comic book writer Harvey Pekar, blends fiction with documentary successfully calling attention to its own construction without necessarily trying to sell the reality of either. Of course, I must point out the great performance by Paul Giamatti, one of the rare actors who does not try to make his cranky characters too lovable.

I have always found "American Splendor" to be a comfort film. I do not know what that says about me that a movie about a guy living an almost unremarkable and sometimes lonely life is comforting. Perhaps, unlike most other movies which try to sell us a fantasy about how we want our lives to be, this film reassures us that more of us are like Pekar trying to get by on a day to day basis without having to conform to the behavior of the mainstream. It may not be necessarily healthy for Pekar to stuff his apartment with records and have a general problem with cleanliness, but, as long as he finds his little moments of happiness in his interests, it can be a more satisfying life than those who base their actions on what most other people expect them to do.

Open Range (dir. Kevin Costner, scr. Craig Storper) (released August 15, 2003)

Now, this is one of the inclusions that will probably have a few of you scratching your head, but I quite liked this old-fashioned western, the best of Costner's films as a director, for being one of the rare movies that really show real men during an era where they have become more than a bit feminized. I think most men would see themselves in either of the main characters, Boss Spearman (played by the great Robert Duvall) and Charley Waite (played by Costner). One of them is older and hopes that he has acquired some wisdom over the years, while the other protects their emotions and demons from being exposed to anyone who may care.

I never would have expected to find this movie so watchable. It is one of those films that pops up on cable every other month and I tend to get hooked on it, even when I am aware it may not be the most groundbreaking or original movie, but it speaks to a part of me that feels what it offers has gone missing from movies these days. I cannot forget to mention that the final shootout of the film is very well-directed and paced in a way that most action sequences never slow down enough to achieve.

Shattered Glass (dir. & scr. Billy Ray) (released October 31, 2003)

This is another choice that you will not have seen on many other lists, but this film was actually pretty important in the ethical issues regarding journalism it was addressing. This was based on the true story of Stephen Glass, who made up the majority of his stories when writing for The New Republic during the 1990's. Perhaps, my sometimes borderline obsession with trying to parse out all the bullshit we are fed in the mainstream news media has something to do with my enthusiasm for the film.

It is also in the final half hour that "Glass" not only takes apart shoddy journalism, but also shows us how workplace politics often gets in the way of getting the job done properly. In a great speech, Chuck Lane (played by Peter Sarsgaard) explains to another editor that everyone at the magazine let Glass get away with anything because of his endless pandering and ass-kissing. Basically, they found his personality and his fabricated pieces entertaining and let that affect their better judgment. Now, not only have I witnessed something like this personally too many times at my various jobs, but it was something important to point out during a time when we elect politicians who we would rather have a beer with than have someone smarter and more competent do the job.

I must almost note the film's other great achievement, which is casting the wooden and whiny Hayden Christensen in the role he was born to play: a passive-aggressive, self-victimizing weasel. I cannot believe he will ever find a role so suited for his persona (or lack of one).

Bad Santa (dir. Terry Zwigoff, scrs. Glenn Ficarra & John Requa) (released November 26, 2003)

Finally, a movie that takes apart Christmas, which encourages mindless consumerism and conformity in our society at the end of every year. Most modern comedies do not work, as you realize most of them depend so much on pop culture references that will be irrelevant a few years down the line. "Bad Santa" is a movie that finds its humor in poetic and foul-mouthed words, as if Charles Bukowski took a shot at writing a mainstream Christmas comedy. It is a symphony of vulgarity that starts in its opening credits and never lets up.

In one of the most under-appreciated comic performances, Billy Bob Thornton is an actor who truly does not care about being liked and never restrains himself from playing the worst aspects of an angry drunk. Though the movie flirts with formula by having Thornton's character befriend a wimpy kid, it does not shy away from some of the clear mental issues the kid probably has. At the end of the movie, you actually wonder if Thornton's Willie has actually had any positive effect on the kid or did he just turn him into a smaller version of himself?

The dialogue of "Bad Santa" (said to have been rewritten by the film's producers, Joel & Ethan Coen) contains so many classic and quotable lines for the misanthropes within all of us, but you have to pay attention to what I consider to be the most important one near the end of the movie when Willie's partner Marcus (played by Tony Cox) betrays him. When he sees Marcus and his materialistic wife have gathered up loads of stuff from the store to take with them, Willie asks, "Do you really need all that shit?" Perhaps, this supposedly anti-Christmas movie understood the true meaning of the holiday more than most would admit. This should be seen every year with the only other worthwhile Christmas movie "It's A Wonderful Life".

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (dir. Peter Jackson, scrs. Jackson, Fran Walsh & Phillippa Boyens) (released December 17, 2003)

The final part of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy ends with its most emotional moments, as you see the toll this journey has taken on all the characters. Although there would be some big budget Hollywood films to enjoy after this, I had to admit that this represented the end of how important they would be for my moviegoing experience. As I had mentioned when I discussed "Fellowship", this trilogy was to me what "Star Wars" means to so many others. But I also could not possibly expect Jackson or lesser directors to match what "Rings" did for fantasy films.

Perhaps, these days, some have softened their enthusiasm for these films because they did not become too ingrained in pop culture. Well, pop culture does not really mean a whole lot to me considering what it chooses to elevate these days. It is the filmmaking and storytelling on display that sets these movies apart. It is moments like the one where Sam (played by Sean Astin) tells Frodo (played by Elijah Wood) that he will carry him the rest of the way. Sure, it is corny and manipulative, but it works because the film spent 8 hours before setting up how important their friendship was to one another.

There was a genuine sadness at the end of the first time I watched the film when I thought to myself that I did not believe fantasy, action, or science fiction movies would ever again put as much effort into engaging me emotionally as much as they would into their special effects. For the most part, that turned out to be true even for Jackson himself with his subsequent films.

The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara (dir. Errol Morris) (released December 19, 2003)

This is a fitting end to these two years of the 00's, a film about trying to learn lessons from past mistakes. This documentary, which consists mostly of Morris subtly grilling McNamara on his life and his choices as the US Secretary of Defense in the 1960's, is not only about what we take away, but about what McNamara himself has learned from his achievements and mistakes. Watching the film almost feels like McNamara is on trial with himself acting as both prosecutor and defense.

As with most of his films, Morris proves once again to have some of the most innovative and experimental of editing techniques, employing stock footage and visual effects to clearly illustrate what McNamara is talking about, even if you are not necessarily a student of strategic foreign policy. Of course, one can draw parallels to what was being discussed in the film about Vietnam to the invasion of Iraq early in 2003. Unlike Michael Moore pummeling us with his admonitions in "Farenheit 9/11" the following year, Morris takes the intellectual approach and lets us decide what the right thing to do was. You can understand, though probably not agree, why McNamara makes his decisions in the moment, but wish he had the foresight to see what the consequences were.

Well, as they say, those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. There was a defining characteristic of this country during the '00's, which was the inability to understand logical reasoning when it was much easier to resort to reactionary responses. Like the moviegoers I discussed at the beginning of this piece, perhaps most people have a difficult time listening, watching and absorbing.

In our next segment, I will cover the years 2004 and 2005, as well as the changing world of filmmakers now that the technology of high definition video has possibly afforded a more democratic approach to the movies we see, allowing something made on a small budget to look like a "real film". Not only is digital video a tool for independent filmmakers, but even those who work within the Hollywood system as well. It was during this time when I changed my perspective of what film can actually be.

Pulled Wools & Gotcha Moments: Shutter Island

2010-02-26T23:45:00.006-05:00

(WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS WILL BE DISCUSSED!!!)

Although obviously reminiscent of the films of Alfred Hitchcock, the film that Martin Scorsese's latest, "Shutter Island", reminds me most of is Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" due to my post-screening reaction to the film. It is not a secret that I consider both directors to be two of my filmmaking heroes. Yet, with "The Shining" and "Shutter Island", there is this inescapable feeling that both filmmakers are applying a considerable amount of spit and shine to material that is, how shall I put this, Grade C Junk. What makes both films seem desperate is that Scorsese and Kubrick work overtime to convince us (and, I believe, themselves) that they are not making B movies by artfully composing one superficially beautiful or clever shot after another that are ultimately devoid of much meaning or emotion.

Without trying to make this yet another commentary on the state of Scorsese's career in the last decade, I will say that "Shutter" contains some of the most beautiful imagery in any of his films since the under-appreciated "Kundun". The island and the asylum function as a playground for Scorsese to indulge in some of his most striking compositions with the help of the great Robert Richardson (who I thought seemed a bit handcuffed in his "Inglourious Basterds" camera work). I am grateful that this film gives Scorsese a chance to experiment with dream imagery, particularly one sequence between the main character and his late wife where he holds her close and she disintegrates into a pile of ash. For all the problems many have with this film, it is, without a doubt, a visually enthralling experience, not unlike "The Shining".

But like Kubrick's film, there are those nagging questions that come up when I sit and think about them for just a few minutes. My first question after "The Shining" was: Is there anything more to this film than a man making crazy faces and chasing his family around an empty hotel with an axe? However, if I want to refine that question and go a little deeper, I would then simply ponder if the film was anything more than a genre exercise that the director mounted beautifully without engaging my mind or heart in any significant way?

"Shutter Island" is the story of duly-appointed federal marshal Teddy Daniels (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner Chuck Aule (played by Mark Ruffalo) as they come to the Ashecliffe Asylum on the island to find an inmate, Rachel Solando, who disappeared mysteriously. Almost immediately, their investigation is stonewalled by the asylum's doctors, most notably Dr. Cawley (played by Ben Kingsley in the Ben Kingsley role) and Dr. Naehring (played by Max von Sydow in the Max von Sydow role). This is obviously what the trailer, which we all saw a few million times, has laid out as the narrative. Of course, knowing full well how the 21st century thriller functions, you can also assume that practically everything you see on the surface is not what it seems.

It turns out that Teddy is actually a patient at the asylum, who the doctors and the entire staff of the asylum are manipulating in an elaborate roleplay for him to accept reality. Teddy, traumatized by World War II when he helped liberate a concentration camp in Dachau, also happened to be married to a mentally unstable woman, Dolores (played by Michelle Williams), who snapped and drowned their three children one day. He actually was a federal marshal, but is still pretending to be one in an attempt to find his wife's murderer. But Teddy is the one who killed Dolores right after discovering what she did.

What may follow may seem harsh, as I can say I did not hate the film, but the reasons that prevented me from not caring a whole lot about it are recurring problems in many films, particularly in the last decade. As much as I have read many critics accuse Scorsese's "The Departed" of being a sell-out project where he provided a more commercially-acceptable version of his previous gangster sagas, I have to say that Scorsese's chasing of trends, particularly in "The Aviator" and now "Shutter Island" bothers me more. "The Aviator" contains some of his most impersonal filmmaking, a trendy by-the-numbers biopic with a CGI-aided glossy aesthetic housed in a self-important shell as Oscar bait that I could not honestly differentiate from the works of Ron Howard. It seemed like Scorsese wanted to convey the beauty of flying because he felt the audiences would lap up the ride, even if his direction demonstrated that he had no understanding of what that experience truly feels like. This was a grounded filmmaker trying to convince us that he had wings.

The trend that "Shutter Island" seems to be chasing is what I now call the Big Twist Narrative that seems to have plagued horror films and thrillers for the last ten years. The narratives often function as a series of twists, fakeouts and gotcha moments building to an ending designed to make you slap your head and proclaim "Holy crap! I didn't see that coming!" Who knew Rod Serling would become one of the most influential writers of our time? Most would obviously point to M. Night Shyamalan's "The Sixth Sense" as the Ground Zero moment when filmmakers started making movies that resembled feature-length Twilight Zone episodes. I do believe that is a bit unfair, as I still consider both the Twist in "Sense" and the story that precedes it to still be justified as a narrative about human emotions. Besides, the emotional climax of that movie was always the final scene between main character Cole Sear and his mother in the car.

If there is a Shyamalan film that "Shutter Island" recalls, it is "The Village", the film where the Big Twist was completely unnecessary to supporting what the film's message was (which was actually a theme worth exploring however botched it was), but also, makes you backtrack and wonder how all the elaborate wool-pulling made any sense on a logical level. "The Village" could have pulled off the same theme if the characters had actually lived in the past, as opposed to the revelation they were in a secluded village in the present. The theme of using fear to keep people in line would not have suffered any less for it.

Another film that suffered from this was the French thriller "Tell No One", which ends with a laborious 15 minute explanation by one character that at first convinces you that it is laying down the facts, but then you discover that it contains even more needless wool-pulling. Half of David Mamet's most recent films never know when to stop toying with us. I would also add "Mystic River" and "Gone Baby Gone" (like "Shutter Island", they are based on novels by Dennis Lehane), which each contain several more narrative twists and coincidences and bits of trickery than is really necessary and often do not serve character or emotion. They almost feel designed to extend simple stories through plot mechanics in fear that the resolution may come about too quickly rather than justifying its plot through character development.

The problem I have with those movies and "Shutter Island" is that it often seems like the writers and the directors are more concerned with playing a game with my head than engaging me honestly. This is a movie that ultimately is about a man discovering that he went insane after his wife killed their children, which occurs after traumatic experiences during World War II. Does the movie do much to really explore any of those emotions? No, it instead puts the character on a creepy island and lets him run around it like a rat in a maze, just so that he can find out something every other character already knows about him. Much like "Gangs of New York" where I had wished the movie had been about the backstory of Bill the Butcher and Priest Vallon (as opposed to his uninteresting son's revenge against the Butcher while romancing a hooker on the side), I thought the true human horror to explore in this movie was the breakdown of the marriage between Teddy and his wife, where you would have had to guess which one of them was losing their minds. Then again, that movie was already made starring Leonardo DiCaprio: the unfairly-maligned "Revolutionary Road", which I always considered to be a movie about seemingly normal people who were actually dangerously self-delusional.

Once the twist of "Shutter Island" is revealed and explained in a presentation by Ben Kingsley (with the help of a white board and rivaling the one in "Tell No One" for sheer length), my mind starts to go back and try to see the movie from a new perspective to see if it makes sense. The trick with the Big Twist Narrative is that it is often revealed at the very end of the film in the hopes that you won't recognize how ridiculous it may actually be. In rare cases, such as "Vertigo" or "The Crying Game", the Big Twist is revealed halfway through the movie, forcing the characters to actually deal with the consequences of knowing more than they were supposed to know. That is interesting to me and elevates this level of storytelling to something beyond trying to mess with my head. Also, the revelation in "The Crying Game" was character-based and the plot in "Vertigo" was not as overly complicated as today's Big Twist Narratives.

In Scorsese's film, I am supposed to believe that the doctors stuck Teddy on a boat with his fake partner, who is actually his doctor, and had it circle back to the island, where they let him pretty much take control of the whole facility so that he can find his way out of his own delusions. Now, this may make for a more superficially "thrilling" narrative, but it makes me wonder if it is actually the doctors who are truly insane. Perhaps, there may have been a better form of therapy that did not include Teddy blowing up Dr. Cawley's car or knocking out a guard with the butt of a rifle. Even more odd is that the facility's staff seem to be world-class performers, living their roles 24/7 like the best of Hollywood's Method actors. Were there auditions to pick the nurse that plays the part of Rachel Solando with all the intensity of Gena Rowlands? I am surprised that no one picked up that the big secret of "Shutter Island" is that it is actually "The Truman Show" with mental patients as extras.

Do you see what I am getting at here about the Big Twist Narrative? When it is done functioning as a ruse, they often reveal themselves to be more than a bit absurd. I start imagining the meetings all the participants took to hatch such an elaborate plot and also consider them lucky that nearly everything fell into place to allow them to get away with such a ridiculous plan as long as they did. I have not read a Dennis Lehane novel, but, based on the three movies based on his work, he seems to never know when to quit with the narrative trickery which often comes at the expense of the serious subject matter. All three films deal with the deaths (or alleged deaths, thanks to Lehane yanking our chains even more in "Gone Baby Gone") of children, while paying only lip service to actually exploring the issue of violence acted upon a child.

In interviews, Scorsese has said the reason he made this film was Teddy's final line where he wonders whether it is better to "die a good man than live as a monster", which is definitely something I would have loved to see Scorsese make a movie about. Because I do not believe "Shutter Island" is actually about that. Like "The Shining", it is missing a directorial point of view about anything beyond cinematic style. Sure, the style and tone have a sure hand behind them, but, for me, movies need to be more than that.

I am put in the position of reviewing a movie that I believe is a first class effort with material that I believe is hackneyed. The cast assembled for this film is top-notch with nearly every performance hitting the right notes. Leonardo DiCaprio gets a bad rap for allegedly bringing down the quality of Scorsese's recent output, but except for "Gangs", I think these films truly showcase how much of a better actor he has become. His performance is touching and haunting throughout, peaking during the moment when he discovers the bodies of his children. It is so wrenching to watch you would think the movie earned that emotion. Michelle Williams does a great job playing a figment of his imagination. Mark Ruffalo is as reliably good as he always is, as is Patricia Clarkson, Jackie Earle Haley, John Carroll Lynch and a hilarious Ted Levine. Even though Ben Kingsley is playing the type of role he can phone in at this point, he seems to be playing the role with a slight wink to the audience, as if fully aware of his typecasting.

The production design, cinematography and choice of source music are effective in creating the mood of this film. These are many of the same compliments I would pay to "The Shining" as well. If I were to watch both "Shutter" and "Shining" with the dialogue track off and involvement in the story took second place to each film's visual pleasures, I would understand what each film's supporters get out of either film. Unfortunately, the unsettling moods of both films are undone by the silliness of their narratives, which I have a difficult time ignoring.

"Shutter Island" has the extra problem of being a product of its time, where the construction of the plot is more important than the sum of its themes. It becomes a series of parlor tricks that leads to a conclusion that is not as mind-blowing as the director or writer hoped. It feels like someone telling you they will pull a table cloth off without pulling off the dishes. They tug at the cloth just a little and then say they are going to do it for real this time. They then repeat this several more times, before flipping the entire table with the dishes crashing to the floor. Those dishes are the Big Twist.

I am one that always believed that everything in a film is manipulative to an extent, although the degree of manipulation one can get away with is dependent on the subject matter. I don't know about you, but perhaps the act of a mother drowning her children requires a narrative that tries to understand that act rather than make it be the final piece of a puzzle. When I see a great director like Martin Scorsese, whose previous films were not nearly as plot-oriented, take part in this narrative trickery, I begin to realize how unfulfilling these types of films mostly are. When I spend the entire running time of the film putting the puzzle together in my head while not caring all that much about the people at the center of the mystery, there is a problem. The film all but announces that there will be a big revelation at the end which makes watching it a bit of a slog, particularly when the middle of this film is edited as flabbily as it is. Once I guessed early on that Teddy's partner is the doctor that had left the island, I spent the time sitting there waiting for the movie to tell me that Teddy was actually a patient in the hospital even if the details about why still eluded me.

Watching "Shutter Island" became a matter of waiting for the final narrative whammy to be delivered because I was not that involved in what Teddy Daniels was doing in the present time of the narrative. It was all about solving the puzzle, when I thought most of Martin Scorsese's films were about anything but solutions to characters' problems and certainties about their psychologies. This is the man who ended "Taxi Driver" with Travis Bickle looking somewhat paranoid at his rearview mirror. "Goodfellas" ends with Henry Hill closing a door on our faces, unredeemed by turning state's evidence on his former friends because he loved being a gangster so much. Scorsese even left Jesus Christ and the Dalai Lama in states of flux, unknowing where their faith will take them next. In "Shutter Island", we are given the undeniable answer that Teddy was delusional and, despite the flimsy attempts at ambiguity, we are also sure that he will submit willingly to his lobotomy because he otherwise would not have said the line about dying a good man or living as a monster with such clarity. That idea is not supported by the film preceding it, as much as it is stated to give the plot a purpose it never actually earned.

Like most puzzle films, there is a solution or, at least, the need to meet audience expectations of wrapping the entire package in a little bow. It may be clever and polished with an undeniable professionalism, but what does it leave me to think about when I leave the theater?

Shutter Island was viewed at the Clearview Ziegfeld Theater.