As an amateur director I look for other filmmakers that inspire me or teach me or interest me. The most obvious modern director that I look to for this is none other than Paul Thomas Anderson. His films are so beautifully crafted - from his camera setups, his editing style, his storytelling process and his soundtracks - that each time I watch them I find something new and interesting. As a fan of his I have noticed, and others have as well, that he has grown so much from film to film. His first film, Hard Eight, is a low budget drama with only 8 speaking roles. His latest film, There Will Be Blood was a monumental achievement about fatherhood, capitalism, religion and the Industrial Revolution. These films seem to be extremely different in almost every category. But if you look closely you can see how he has engineered a very similar structure to both of these films. What this article will aspire to accomplish is proving that a story line can be slightly tweaked and altered to add depth and thematic ideas. What is amazing is how much PT has grown from Hard Eight to There Will Be Blood and how everything we thought PT Anderson could do was thrown upside down. So here are the similarities:
A Son Without A Father
In Hard Eight, John C. Reilly has lost his mother by the beginning of the film. We also learn that his father was killed. The man who has become the father figure in his life is played by Philip Baker Hall. We learn that Hall's character killed Reilly's father in Atlantic City years ago. So the fact that Hall has somewhat adopted Reilly's character is fueled somewhat through guilt. This fact is never revealed to Reilly's character, only to the audience.
In There Will Be Blood, HW has lost his father by the beginning of the film. His father was in an oil well with Daniel Plainview when an accident happened and by some strange occurrence HW's father was killed and Plainview went unharmed. So Plainview takes the child in as his own and we must determine why he did this throughout the movie. The most obvious reason would be like in Hard Eight, guilt. But there is more going on, maybe he is using the child to woo the prospective customers into letting him drill on their land. Either way these films are almost identical within this relationship. The only difference is PT uses this secret in TWBB to have an emotionally powerful scene towards the end when Plainview confesses to HW. Whereas in Hard Eight the secret is used more as subtext within the drama.
Father Teaches the Scam
In both movies the father teaches the son ways to take advantage of the system that they happen to be part of. In Hard Eight Hall's character teaches Reilly's character how to use rate cards to take advantage of the casino. By doing so Reilly gets a free hotel room and bed. In There Will Be Blood Plainview is teaching HW how to negotiate oil deals and eventually HW is negotiating his own deals. Obviously they are both completely different but both have a sense of dishonesty and once again the example in TWBB is more powerful.
The Accident That Changes Everything
In Hard Eight there is an overwhelming dramatic scene in which Reilly's character has kidnapped and beaten a man. Within this scene, which is about 15 minutes long, each character has an emotional breakdown. The father figure calls Reilly's character a dumb whore and seems to have reverted back to the gangster he once was. The resolution of the scene leads to Sam Jackson's character taking advantage of information he has on Hall's character. It also leads to Reilly's character and his wife leaving town. Sam Jackson will use this information to blackmail Hall's character.
In There Will Be Blood an equally affecting scene happens when an oil rig explodes while HW is on top of it. Plainview rushes to help his child only to eventually leave him in HW's time of desperation to look on the oil that will make him rich. He reverts to the slimy business man we always knew he was, completely tossing aside his son. The resolution of the scene leads to him sending HW away which leads to the preacher character having this information to blackmail Plainview into joining his church. You can see the similarities and I hope you don't think I'm stretching because it seems rather obvious. The accident is a tool that a lot of screenwriters use as plot points to push the story. PT just happens to use this same idea, only expanding on it somewhat with more nuance and depth in TWBB. The other difference, which is one of many reasons I love TWBB is that in that film the accident is a freak of nature, a random occurrence that seems to happen all the time around oil wells and especially around Plainview. Whereas in Hard Eight we don't see the accident and it happens out of stupidity.
Girls
In both films the son falls in love with a blond, emotionally distant female. Obviously that seems strange from TWBB because that female is a young girl but she is obviously going through some shit at home. In both instances the female's seem to really admire and love the father figure as well as the son. Eventually both females take the son from the father. Only in Hard Eight Hall's character seems fine with this and in TWBB Plainview is not fine with this, in fact he is is furious over the loss of his son.
I Got You, You Got Me, I Got You
In Hard Eight Philip Baker Hall's character doesn't like Sam Jackson's character from the moment they meet. He doesn't like how much influence he has over Reilly's character. He makes Jackson feel small and insignificant. So Jackson then blackmails Hall using information and a gun. He holds him hostage for some time while Hall tries to get money. But once Jackson gets what he wants Hall gets the last laugh when he kills Jackson.
In There Will Be Blood Plainview doesn't like the preacher from the moment they meet. He doesn't like how much influence he has over the community. He makes the preacher feel like a fraud and insignificant. So the preacher then blackmails Plainview using information he has on a murder and then in church he uses the fact that Plainview abandoned his son to get him to break down in front of everyone at the the church. But once the preacher gets what he wants Plainview gets the last laugh when he kills the preacher. The fact that PT uses a 20 year span between incident adds to the drama at the end.
There Will Be blood
The ending to each movie is extremely similar in context. Hard Eight ends with Hall's character killing Jackson's character. The last shot is Hall sitting on a chair contemplating what he has done. There Will Be Blood ends in much more glory with the famous milkshake line and the third revelation rant and eventually chasing the preacher around a bowling alley. He eventually beats him over the head with a bowling pin. One is cold blooded, calculated, the other is emotional and self destructive. They both end with each character killing their nemesis and then contemplating what has happened. The differences are obvious. There Will Be Blood is grandiose in it's ending, Hard Eight is quiet and contemplative. But that is the growth in PT Anderson. He has the same basic constructs of an ending only he morphs from a small exciting moment into a large monumental scene of insanity which has been talked about ever since TWBB was released.
It is a great exercise to see these similarities because within them you can see the differences that matter, and the execution and added direction that makes each different and yet the same. I hope people have gotten something out of these comparisons. If anyone has any more similarities please post them.
2012 is shaping up to be the most memorable in quite some time. With some big sequels, some new and exciting directors taking shape, and some well established directors getting their due. This list takes some liberty with the release schedule because so many have yet to be announced for the year.
This year started off with an absolute thud. For the first four months there was absolutely no film released that was worth a damn. Then we got a couple excellent films and then the summer hit and then fall came around and now it's just like any other year: It starts out like a wilderbeast looking to take a dump and ends with a massive flying rhino type wilderbeast flying through the air humming Beck. So basically I think the year has been pretty good. I have yet to see Take Shelter, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or Ides of March so my lists may be somewhat lacking. There is no absolute best film of the year, no clear cut I should say, like last year. These lists should really just be entertaining to see what other people thought of the year. I believe that some movies will benefit from being on this list, if only for the handful of people who care what I have to say.
Best Films of the Year
15. The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo
Minor Fincher. Why he did this is beyond me, the only obvious thing would be a cash grab, but I won't judge the man. Although he is doing 30,000 leauges under the sea so we could be seeing the last of the Zodiac/Social Network Fincher. This is an extremely well crafted thriller, with some great acting. The story is sensational, and it is not all that original, that is to say it's somewhat of a run-of-the-mill serial killer movie. What Fincher brings to it is a very good investigation aspect and a tone that is lacking from the first. Rooney Mara is the film though, she is the reason that this movie is one of the years best and that is because of Fincher's devotion to her and his own style of directing.
14. Hanna
What can you say, it's a fairytale with guns. It's fun, which is something this year definitly had, a lot of fun movies. The movie is great to look at and the scenes with the family that she runs with are a lot of fun.
13. Midnight in Paris
Woody Allen is Owen Wilson is Woody Allen is seeing Ernest Hemingway and is banging Rachel McAdams. This movie is great if you're an literature fan, although if you're not I don't know how well this movie will work for you. But I loved the two hours I got to spend with this nice movie.
12. The Adventures of Tin Tin
This is an adventure. And we don't get adventure films anymore. I love set pieces and Spielberg does them brilliantly. Watching this film is like watching the ambitions of every big budget summer blockbuster. But their ambitions are never even close to reaching Spielberg's minor work, which this is but it is still better than most of the action movies that come out on a yearly basis.
11. Attack The Block
Alien invasion at it's finest. Funny, exciting, beautiful, fast paced. It's going to be watched by me probably 100 times before I turn 40.
10. Rango
Same thing as Attack the Block. The animation is great and the humor is perfect. Lot's of references, lots and lots. Once Upon a Time in The West's score is one the best.
9. Moneyball
Well exucuted, well acted. The first movie that I realized that Brad Pitt can be an actual "actor." I'm really excited to see Bennett Miller's career. He seems to be great with slow building dramas and has a knack for pulling out performances.
8. A Dangerous Method
Cronenberg delivers what he has for the last 30 years, but not really. It is so subtexted and so brilliantly directed that after repeat viewings I think this will hold up as one of his best.
7. Contagion
So perfectly crafted. Get some hand sanitizer afterwords, trust me.
6. Meek's Cutoff
The best film Reickhardt has done. I can't wait to watch it on Blu Ray. Meek is a genius, in my opinion. It starts out quite slow but once you get into the rhythm it is an excellent thriller, set in the west.
5. The Descendants
I think the movie is not perfect and it may be trying too hard at points but the emotional response is overwhelming and the last half hour is really something amazing. I like everything Alex Payne has done and he continues to hone his own brand of filmmaking, which is not flashy but very poignant.
4. Shame
Steve McQueen will be the best director working in about 4 years. Trust me, he has something special. If you see this movie try to think about it as a study in self destruction not sex addiction. This movie may be looked back on in 10 years as one of the best of the decade and a turning point for the independent film scene.
3. The Tree Of Life
Yes there are some problems with the movie but it is so ambitious and so monumental in it's scope that I litterally felt like I was jabbed over the head after watching it. In a good way. The existential aspect of the film is what makes it so interesting to watch and that mix with the images is what will make it hold up over time.
2. Hugo
Scorsese is back baby, this is his best movie sense maybe After Hours. "Fun" is a word I would use to describe this movie but it really has so much depth that it transcends fun. The craft of the movie is also something to behold, I hope many children love this and find a way into film through the magic of this movie.
1. Drive
The best movie this year. It's got ambition, and it's got execution. It is so original in an unoriginal package(heist/gangster movie). I just can't think of a movie where I felt the power of the cinema more. Yes Tree of Life has dinosaurs and a beautiful score but Drive has such a flawlessly executed hour and a half that I never realized I was in a theatre. There is not a lot said for the last five minutes but it truly is astounding. As is the direction, the acting and the soundtrack. I mean the title track that is used twice is so original and different and strange and bold. I just love the movie and watching this on Blu Ray is my most anticipated release for 2012.
Honorable Mentions:
Win Win. Super 8. Page One: Inside the New York Times. Senna. ROTPOTA. Earth liberation Front. Film Socialism. Young Adult. Mission Impossible - Ghost Protocol.
Best Performances
1. Michael Fassbender - Shame/XMen/A Dangerous Method/Jane Eyre
This movie was so real, the dialogue, the characters, the themes. This film just reeked of anti-hero, melancholy anti-redemption. The theme of a man who is alone and is trying to change and put together the pieces that he broke is not an original one. But the way the story develops and the character's interactions are completely original. Mickey Rourke is a pro wrestler who is getting way too old to wrestler, and way too old to be alone. He decides to find some kind of emotional connection. The true problem for Rourke's character is that he's lived too much of life, fucked too much of it up, and now the repairs he wants just aren't out there. This is where the mechanic would tell him to go and buy a new car, but this is his life, and it's impossible to buy a new life when you are a middle aged, greasy, spandex wearing semi-professional wrestler. And that is the beauty of the film. Most films will make this character have a momentous epiphany and start new relationships with old important people in his life. If this movie went that clich'ed route he would go and reunite with an old lover and his kids or an old friend, and that person or relationship would in turn change him and make him happy with his new found life. In this film our protagonist is going on the same path. He goes to see his adult daughter who hates him so much that with the information that he has had a triple bypass she tells him bluntly that he should go fuck himself. She pronounces her understanding that the only reason he is coming to her is that he wants her to take care of him. She walks off screaming "Fuck you" to him. The only relic of his daughter's existence in his life is a picture of her as a young kid, and now she is in her mid 20's. He also wants to be with a stripper who is really on the same path as him. She's aging and that is a problem as a stripper. She's trying to start a new life, which again, is tough when you hit a certain age, just like the wrestler. Their professions are staggeringly similar, much more so than I would have considered. The crowd pleasing, sexuality and need to be liked are all traits that both of them have been enveloped in.
Now up to this point this movie is great but not any kind of different from past redemption movies. You could right the rest of the story. The Wrestler starts to feel the compassion of his new found woman in his life. He starts to become enamored with the new emotions he has and the stability the two women could give him. The two women meet, they hit it off and then the wrestler gets some cool job like announcing for the WWE. They live happily ever after and he is still a legend to many. That would have been okay because of the great acting, the great dialogue and the lovely camera work and wrestling scenes and tits. But no the writers decided to get into this character and see why he has gotten to this lonely point in life, and why he is barely making rent and living in a trailer. You emote with your character and see why he abandoned his daughter, why hasn't he had a steady woman in his life. And once you do that you start to piece together characteristics that would determine the rest of his story and the movie. He is a guy who hasn't given a shit about his daughter, or really anything in the real world besides his self serving career. So why would he change? He wouldn't! People don't change gigantic character traits after their mid way point in life.
If this guy was so self centered, and so anti culture and so flaky before than that is how he is going to make choices and live the rest of his life. So he ends up fucking up the small little minuscule hope a relationship with his daughter. After he tells her that he should have been there for her and will be there. He tells her that she is the only thing he has left in his sad life. But he does what he has always done and what he would do in real life which is fuck it up. He got a steady job, but at a deli in a supermarket. A wrestler isn't going to go from wearing tight spandex and shaving his armpits to play fight with other grown men in front of hundreds of people to cutting a half pound of Virginia ham to little old ladies. He has never made sacrifices. Even with just a small sample of his life in this movie they so convey the ineptitude of this man to grasp on to any kind of normal human traits. Just the way he lives, the people he is hanging with, the loneliness of this small sample size are enough to convey an entire life.
That is the real beauty of the movie, it's like being able to read a chapter of a book and grasp what the entire novel is going to be like. Every scene with him is giving us more of an entrance into his past and future. The way this movie ends is so great because it is exactly what the character would do in reality. His stripper woman who he wanted to start something with basically quits her job to come and rescue him and show him that people want to see him succeed. But selfishly, and completely insultingly, he goes on to wrestle even though he knows he will probably die. She sacrificed her heart in a way, and her job to come and support him and help him. And he says with his actions that he could care less, he is going to do what he wants to do.
The amazing thing about the movie is that my emotions were constantly in flux. At first you're forced to show compassion to this guy because he is nice to everyone, he is personable and you feel like helping him. He is a cool guy that has been living an exciting life and you want to see him change. You want him to succeed so badly with his daughter. You want him to fall in love with the stripper and find a great new place in life. Then you feel no pity for him because he had a chance to mend everything. I mean he opened up with his daughter and made her feel for him again even though that was the last thing she wanted to do. They were going to start something new. And in those little moments I wanted to know more about his daughter. Almost more than he did, he just wanted the companionship. And then he fucks that up, he fucks up his job, he shows no growth. And then you realize he is never going to win in anything. But you are still on his side, who knows what for. There is going to be no redemption or epiphany. He is his own protagonist. By the end of the movie, after learning why he is this way and what he isn't going to become, you start to emote with him and maybe our realization that he is who he is was also his realization and we start to go through the same emotions together.
-The ability of the writer to sit in this guys' shoes and put together his decisions and the car he would drive, or the job he would be working is really prevalent. Of course this old school wrestler is going to be driving a shit van with all of his VHS tapes and little action figures in the back. He is going to be so dependent on people liking him that with any chance of that not happening he will run away. There was one little scene that struck me, Rourke goes into the strip club but the bouncer hugs him and they shoot the shit and the bouncer asks him if he can get him some pain killers for his back. Rourke says yes he would and then a couple scenes later he is a gym buying steroids. The drug dealer asks him if he needs any pain killers and Rourke doesn't even think about it. He doesn't care about someone else, it doesn't even enter his mind. Those little characteristics really shine in this movie. Not to mention the fantastic acting, really just an intrinsic performances I've ever seen.
-The film was shot using a lot of long shots. They use a lot of wide shots for the audience to suck in the room or the ring or the crowd. There are rarely any closeups. They way they shoot the strip club is different from the entire movie. This could have been for technical reasons or they might have put together a shot chart and decided to shoot that world different from the real world.
-The soundtrack is what you would think, a lot of 80's hair metal. That has been the soundtrack to the Wrestler's life and will be the soundtrack to the movie as well.
12-17-09
Jackie Brown-Quentin Tarantino
C
In Tarantino's follow up to the greatest movie ever made, Pulp Fiction, he decides to go into a black culture while still staying with a thrilling story line. Our hero in this movie is a 44 year old black woman, single and attractive. She is just a lonely stewardess who makes extra cash by smuggling money for a gun dealer, played by Sammy Jackson. What I loved about Pulp Fiction were the interesting, fun, scary original characters and how the interacted with each other. Yes the story arcs were great, the dialogue was unbelievable and the shots and acting were also excellent. But the real driving force for me were the different people sifting through that days' events. You had the cool, hip sexy funny Mia. The bad ass philosophical black hit man who was dealing with a miracle on his hands. His buddy who was a western loving manly man who ate bloody steaks and injected heroin into his veins. The boxer who had such pride in himself that he wouldn't deliberately lose a boxing match but by doing so killed a man. His pride made him hold onto his fathers watch with such fervor that he risked his and his girlfriends life to go back for it. Pulp Fiction had even more interesting characters, where ass in Jackie Brown you don't fall in love with all the characters. The Sam Jackson character is a bland nigger spewing loser gun dealer. He is not funny, he doesn't do anything original. His look is very cool, and his life is interesting but he is not, nor is the dialogue that was written for him. DeNiro plays his trashy friend who doesn't talk much and has absolutely no personality. I have never been more Luke-warm for DeNiro. Ever. Ray, the love interest and bail-bondsman is sly but not different or funny or bad ass or really anything. He is just the man for Jackie Brown who does what she says and has no interesting things to add. The more I think about this movie the less I like it. What is great about the movie is the culture you are thrown into, and the cops. Michael Keaton and his buddy are both great and all the scenes with Jackie Brown are excellent. The best part about the movie is watching Jackie Brown get away with the money because you do feel for her and want her to succeed. But the way she gets the money is not very exciting or different or interesting. It is just smart and clever but that climax is quite a let down. Yes we'll tell the cops that 50 thousand is coming in, wait for me and him in the lobby and you'll get it. Yet she hides the actual 500 thousand and then makes it seem like he ran off before they got him. Nothing is looming over her. If she screws up and they find out she tried to take the 500 thousand she doesn't get into any real trouble. So there is not a whole lot to root against. Sorry but this is by far the worst Tarantino movie.
12-26-09
District 9- Neil Blomkamp, Blomkamp & Terri Tachtell
B
The great alien movies all have something in common, the aliens are always extremely intelligent. In the Alien series they may all be animal like in their brutality but they are always the smartest creatures in the room. In War of The Worlds the aliens have giant gamma rays with invisible shields and are smart enough to come down under ground from lightning. Mars Attacks!, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the list is endless. District 9 is a great alien movie, but it strays from the pack by making the aliens a mix between the aggression of a Grizzly Bear, the coordination of Platypus, and the brain of a cat. There is nothing intellectually or technologically intimidating about the aliens and so it is almost human nature to start to sympathize with them. The aliens have been completely isolated from Johannesburg and from any kind of real human interaction and maybe that leads to them having such a disdain for humans. And with that disdain the movie morphs effortlessly from a sociological examination to the fight for what is right.
Neil Blomkamp does such a great job with mixing in small amounts of details and visuals from the past to give the audience the right amount of information to make up your own mind on what is right. Because the end really has nothing to do with what you think is right, should the aliens be allowed to go home or live freely with humans or should they all move to District 10? You decide what you think is best with the documentary style opening of the film and usually you will have a hard time sticking to your guns. There is no obvious solution or mindset that the film makers lay up to you, the aliens are creeps and the humans are creeps and the humans may have disgusting experiments it is nothing surprising. The difference is the aliens are like cats in that they usually don't sort out what is going on they just do what they do. The aliens have no ulterior motives or any dastardly plans of human domination, yes they may be brutes, and they may be gross and they may have scary weapons but they have no evil plans to rule the world or even to escape District 9, they are content and stupid. The film could easily be a political experiment by juxtaposing the less intelligent, isolated, leaderless group of aliens to the human corp UMG that is secretly torturing and experimenting on the aliens and is planning on putting them in a concentration camp. They don't do this because nothing is quite that black and white and so you are not so focused on the thematic part of the film but more on the story and Wikus and the 2 alien buddies.
The character Wikus is maybe the worst action hero in cinema history. The guy is a racist pig with no courage, no moral stance, no kind of leadership or badassness. He is the complete opposite of Bruce Willis. I have no idea why they do this but by doing it makes me feel their courageousness in their film-making. The guy is a dork who seems like he has lived in middle class his whole life, has never had to fight for anything. He has had nothing to fight for. He is just a douche-bag at any office place who has had everything handed to him, who is not in any way his own man. He is a man with no kind of moral compass or any strong ethos one way or another. Now the question is whether or not they did this for any kind of thematic reason. He could be this way to have a major character development, because he goes through being taken as a medical experiment by his own father in law, becoming an outlaw for doing nothing wrong, and his wife casting him out. After all of this he should start to emote with the 'Prawns' because he is turning into one, but he really doesn't change at all until the very end. He knew that Christopher had spent his whole life trying to get fuel so he could fly up to his ship and rescue his people. He understood that the company was going to throw all of his future fellow brethren into a concentration camp and even knowing all of that and knowing how awful they were treated he still sold out Christopher while kidnapping his son just so he could attempt to escape. This was so completely horrifying that I was really basically done believing in Wikus, the only character you are rooting for is Christopher and by the end Wikus finally redeems himself by sacrificing his life so that Chris and his son could get out. So my mindset from absolutely hating Wikus to completely hoping that Chris can make it out works perfectly for the end. Because at that point the only way for Wikus to redeem himself to the audience is by doing what he did and thus he turns back into to our hero.
He ends up as just another Prawn, although he does still have his intelligence and his memories. He still loves his wife but the shitty thing on her part is that she doesn't reach out in any way to see him or to reconnect. There is no great finish to the story. The lesser evil of the commando is killed yes, but the real villain in the film is the corporation that is making these aliens suffer for no apparent reason. That evil is manifested in Wikus' Father in law who lies to his daughter by telling her that he sexually assaulted aliens. He was completely willing to kill him for a hope that his organs could help them develop a method to use the aliens' weapons. This is a man who is obviously pullin the strings on turning these creatures into medical experiments. He does not get any comeupence and there is really no real consecuence to anything they did. This all points to maybe the best setup for a sequel ever. The great thing about it is that the movie, unlike all others, doesn't set the whole movie up just to creat a sequel. But because that major villian still exists, and Christopher escaped and Wikus is still alive there is one great sequel brewing. The problem is that the movie has no great resolution, it is of course part of the overal creative plan of not creating a normal film, no normal hero, no normal emotable characters, no easily recogizable solution. This is a lot like the South African problem at hand right now. And maybe this is Blomkamp's approach, to have the parrable thematically relate to the real life pit falls that South Africa faces today.
The originality in the story, the charatericstics of the characters, and the examination of the themes makes this an instant classic and will put this in the group of 2001, Alien, Aliens, Total Recall, and Minority Report as the greatest Sci Fi films of all time. There is no clear cut solution to what happened in the movie. The Prawns are not completely sympathetic creatures, and the way of dealing with the situation is not completely inadaquete. Wikus is not a real hero and there is no great accomplishment. But the exploritory way of the story, the amazing visuals and the thrilling last hour of the film all make this a truly great film.
12-29-09
Slumdog Millionaire- Danny Boyle, Simon Beufoy
A-
Salim Malik is quite possibly the worst brother a guy could have. Imagine being completely in love with a girl from the time you hit the age of five. Now imagine that your brother does everything in his power to keep you away from her. He deliberatly pushes her out of a train back into the hands of an evil man who blinds children and pimps out small girls, and your brother knows this. Now once you rescue her back years later he puts a gun in your face so you will leave so he can have sex with her and then sell her to a crime lord. Then later when you convince her to risk her life to come and run away with you he comes and chases her down to take her back to a truly horrendous life. This is what happens to Jamal, Salim's younger brother in Danny Boyle's masterpiece, Slumdog Millionaire. The India in this movie is much more real than in Darjeeling Limited and not as simplistic either. There is the mass slums that we all have become used to imagining when thinking of India, but there is also a mystical realm of India. WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE.
There is no law in India, or at least the India in this film, every where the film takes us there is no police and no rules. That similarity is apparent in Danny Boyle's career. He made a fast paced junkie movie, then made a creepy grainy looking, new age horror flick. He then made a kids' movie after which he made a romantic comedy. He then decided to make a science fiction movie. The juxtaposition of his career can be seen in this movie. The small children that sleep in a trash dump while eating rotten food seems similar to Trainspotting. The zombie's in this movie are more frightening than the ones in 28 Days Later. They are half dead except they don't pull out a fork and knife and have you for dinner, oh no. They like to physically and psychologically torture you for as long as you stay around. The romantic meetings between Jamal and Latika are quite exceptional and made me tear up in every single one. The love is not based on anything except for Jamal's complete devotion to being with her. They each have small etchings in their psyche's in which they somehow just feel this undeniable, staggering love even though they know so little about eachother. They spent weeks together when they were six years old. Then they spent a couple hours together before Salim threw Jamal out. Then Jamal found her much later in a crime boss' Indian mansion but could not stay more than ten minutes before being thrown out. This is one hell of a love story because I felt that they were in love, and their being together was the most important thing I wanted. And yet I watched a small portion of Jamal's life and rarely ever saw them together, now that's good film making.
The movie is so exciting because of the fast pace of their lives. As kids they move from place to place by stealing on trains. Then after they escape a seriously deranged evil man they continue trough the streets of India. Now the pace wouldn;t be the same without the flashforward scenes of Jamal in an interogation with the police after the show. They ask him how he knew the answers to all the questions and his life explains his understanding of the question and the nature of the answer. So for example, Jamal is explaining why he knew that Benjamin Franklin was on the hundred dollar bill by telling the story of how he found Latika years and years after they were seperated again. So instead of the story being linear and just being the amazing story of this boys rise from living in trash dumps and in construction yards to being the most famous man in India it is adding an entire new dimension to the theme. The farther and farther he gets on the show the more story is filled in and the more we start to understand the sheer luck, or the great karma he has held his whole life. His whole life was meant to be a guide to get to the top of the mountain he resides on at the end of the film.
The camera work is amazing, much like City of God, lots of cuts and lots of colors. The speed of the cuts and the use of the constantly changing camera angles goes hand in hand with the pace of the story and the nuclear fusion of the film. I call it nuclear fusion because in the aformentioned fusion there are so many atoms and such a small space that they create an explosion, but to get that you must harness the atoms and create the fusion. That is what the film is, a conglamorate of layers of characters, stories, scenery, emotions that must be harnessed and Danny Boyle and the editor do that absolutely brilliant. This film deserved the Best Film Oscar because of the flawlessness of the film. There is no great originality in the sense of story or character. There have been plenty rags-to-riches stories, plenty of life-long-lovers, and to many redemption stories. No it does not get point for originality but what it does get points for is acing every other catergory. The depth of the characters is staggering given that you don't spend a lot of time with them at any one point in their lives. The atmosphere is acheived fluidly throughout the film not by using intro shots and not by lingering on landmarks or tragic places but by pushing seemlessly through the story and showing that their lives create the atmosphere. There are so many antagonists in this story and maybe that is the point, that Jamal was being smothered by these gruesome characters but pushed through and held on to his morals and his soul and a lot of cash. The antagonists are so easily hatable and so easily forgotten by the end that justice does not need to be served individualistically, because Jamal won 20 million rupees and that is basically justice giving the proverbial Fuck You.
Slumdog Millionaire is not any kind of original movie, there is quite honestly nothing new at all. But anything else you name, dialouge, editing, cinematography, acting, atmosphere, anything are all A+. The movie is uplifting, but not in a corny way. It doesn't try to milk the moment, it is just there to answer questions and finish the story. It is there to complete the thematic architype of Jamal Malik's life, that of high morals, a strong sense of love and his loyalty. Now if only every movie had a dance routine for the end credits, if The Academy was on the fence after the last kiss then the dancing definitly did it for them.
1-1-10
Boogie Nights, Paul Thomas Anderson
A
There is a scene in Boogie Nights which, for me, stands out as one of the best scenes in cinematic history. Scenes like the one in Pulp Fiction where Vincent Vega takes the Boss's wife out at a groovy restaurant that involves great stylistic dialogue, set pieces, drugs, dancing and a great introductory shot. In Casablanca there is an unforgetable scene where our man walks around his night club and interacts with all the ecklectric characters that is both dramatic, laugh out loud funny, and completely beautiful all while creating atmosphere and starting plot points. The Scene like in Jurassic Park-that is completely different than the Pulp Fiction and Casablanca scenes but just as exceptional-where a group of strangely different types of people get stuck in their cars after the power goes out. The problem is they are right in front of where the T Rex stomps around inside his little doggy fence. The tension is so high and the atmosphere is so full of frightening terror that as soon as the T Rex pops his giant glossy beak on the screen your heart has gone Michael Jackson, and that is just the beginning of the scene. The scene in Boogie Nights is just as historically relevant as these are.
It truly is one of the most memorable and amazingly executed scenes I've ever watched. Dirk Diggler and his two buddies are all coked up and decide to go and fuck with the cliche'd freaky Valley drug dealer. Now the tension just grows and grows starting with one of the guys putting a gun in his tight 80's jeans right before they get out of their mashed up muscle car and go into this freak house. Oh I forgot to mention this all takes place in the freaking 80's, yes that magical time. PT Anderson gets that magical quality and splashes it all over the scene. They are trying to sell this freak and another also cliche'd character, the large Black bodyguard, fake happy dirt(coke). They go in this house and meet the drug dealer, who is played by the charismatic freak of nature Alfred Molina. He happens to play a charismatic freak of nature who happens to smoke speed and lounge in his tacky 80's flat rock walled palace wearing a speedo with a beautifully discusting silk robe. There is a random small Chinamen who happens to be tossing firecrackers as he meanders through the drug smoke. Now we are already nervous about guns going off so the constant BANG of the firecrackers just makes you even more on edge. The guys are all coked up so they are ten times as nervous as we are, and now your heart is really bonking around your throat. At one point the tension is so high and everyone is so fucked up and a firecracker goes off and the guy who is packin' the heat just breaks out in psychotic, nervous, honest laughter, and you know what is funny, I felt like laughing too at what the fuck was going on. The music changes to Jessie's Girl and Molina takes out his revolver to play some Deer Hunter style Russian Roulette. Right before he pulls the trigger another well placed firecracker goes off again, jesus this is getting whacked out. Molina is now gyratting his hips and hauntingly and hilariously singing Jessie's Girl. Then Dirk Diggler just blanks out while the large gun toating Black man is checking the chedder the boys brought, just build the tension some more.
They finally get up to leave but the heat packin' mustached man has a plan, and he didn't tell his buddies. He tells Molina, very calmly but also frenetically, that he wants him to go and get all the shit that is in a floor safe in his bedroom. So the Black guy shoots our mustached crazy man in the shoulder, he goes down but kills the Black guy. The two boys are screaming at this jerk off while hiding under the bar. He wants to finish his plan so he goes to the bedroom door. The song, 99 Baloons starts blaring in the backround. And just as that baseline kicks in it cuts to the door open and our guy gets shot by Molina with a shotgun, so awesome, just fucking awesome. The guys escape by evading shotgun fire while trying to start their 80's Mustang. Pure brilliance, even if not all that complicated. The beauty is the music, the setting, the character's personalites mixing with the tension(like Reilly screaming some stupid shit from behind the bar), and the brilliant idea to add firecrackers to a scene that might involve gun fire.
I adore this film. There is no great resolution or any true growth or resolutions with any of the characters. Most producers or execs would make PT have Julianne get to see her kid, or to have Dirk Diggler become some Jack like director. They might even have Rollergirl become a real celebrity in non porn films. They don't and I like it because Anderson is letting us know that these guys don't change, they don't leave and they don't grow. They are a family, a disfunctional incesttation ridden family but a family non the less. The only true resolution is seeing the giant cock of Dirk Diggler which really is the main character of the film. This is like seeing the alien in Signs or seeing the wizard of Oz in the Wizard of Oz. It makes sense because it's a movie about porn and what better fucking way to end the movie then to have that as the great prize at the top of the mountain. I love ensemble casts, I like lots of different characters and following them through whatever it is they happen to do. This movie is great for that because not only are there tons of interesting characters played by great actors but also because they are in the porn industry in the 1970's. Yes the movie is long but how can that be a complaint? The only reason you can ever complain about a length of a film is if the story, plot, or characters are dry or somewhat empty. But if you have dozens of great interesting characters that all happen to be involved in porn in the 70's and 80's and all have great stories that you get to follow then the time you spend with them should not matter. Especially because we get to follow them through great stories in their lives and all happen to be mingeling with the others' lives. Basically Boogie Nights is never dull, never melodramatic or overly slapstick. It somewhat pokes fun at the characters and their situations but also gives great sympathy and heart to their lives. It does exactly what you want from a film about the Porn industry, it makes you laugh, makes you horny and makes emote.
The only true complaints I have on the film are that there is no great theme, at least not any that it carries through till the end. For me Great Great films do all that Boogie does but also uses that to push you through a theme. Think of City of God, where the stories are amazing, the cinematography and the acting and the writing are transcendent, but it also has a great theme. City of God's theme was that crime is a creature all it's own and passes down through generations no matter who is in charge or what is happening. It also proves that just trying to the right thing usually pushes you in the right direction slowly, and that just one bad decision or just one bad thought can suck in to awful things. Boogie Nights doesn't have such themes and maybe that is because it is somewhat of a satire of the Porn Industry and more directly, porn films themselves. Because the movie really could be a porno. It has lots of sex scenes, lots of tits and crazy hairdos. It puts the sex scenes in where it can, just like any porno. It is the greatest Porno of all time but like all pornos it doesn't have a theme. That is the only complaint I have, besides the dick, which is way to fake to be real.
12-31-09
Avatar, James Cameron
B
This movie would be quite average on a little bedroom TV. But in the theatres, in 3D, and packed to brim with other moviegoers it is exhilarating. The way the movie is set up is very old school. Three acts, with the usual rise-fall-rise climax. That goes for the love story and the battle. There is not so much to discuss like in my previous entries. There is the amazing visuals, not just the planet and it's scenery, but also the Navai. The action is great and fun. The weird thing about this movie is there isn't a lot anaylze. The love story was the usual. It makes sense these two would fall in love because she is with him all the time. The weird thing is that he never tries to explain anything that is going on, such as he is actually a cripple human, you would think that might drain on his psyche after a while, and it does, but I would expect that to come up. Just a thought, not a critisizm. The world is amazingly imaginative. There is an unspoken history with the people.
There is also the usual great epic scenes with the group gathering other tribes, think LOTR. A lot of people thought of this as a political statement on the war in Iraq. I just don't see it. I can see the statement on the military and it's horrendous leadership structure. The fact that the guy who is usually in charge of killing things has been in the service long enough that is numb to the process and thus usually has no empathy or critical thinking. They usually are far-sighted and have no connection to the outside world. In this movie that man is a cliche which may be the point. This is the guy that is usually ordering shit storms. That is a guy I would like directing the attack because he knows what he is doing, but making the decisions? I don't like that and obviously Cameron doesn't like it. I would've liked somewhat more sympathy for the troops since these guys are there just to cash a check. But at the end of the movie there is no internal conflict with these troops. There is no thought on the part of the natives or our hero to talk to the troops, they just kill them. The battle scenes are extremely original, maybe because of the 3 D and the special effects but non the less, I have never scene giant flying monsters taking out bad ass hover helicopters that are dropping giant android body armored troops.
The first hour of this movie is spot on movie magic. I love the effects, and the character development. I like the introductory phase of the world and the technology that alows them to enter their avatars. As with the Dark Knight, I think that turning it into a duo movie would've been nice. This is not a reality though and I have to live the lack of true introspection of the politics and the current world and even the technology. Although if they did this and the movie was 2 and half hours but it only went up until say the military took out the tree I'm sure people would be complaining about the lack of pace. I mostly loved this movie, I saw it twice, and really think that Jim Cameron, given the time, can create amazing cinema. This is probably just as good as LOTR. The amount of time that Peter Jackson and his partners spent on the prep of those movies is astounding. The fact that those crazy ass New Zealanders filmed all three movies together, and they all were 4 hours worth of film is really something to behold. But I think that Cameron spent just as much prep, and the fact that he was creating this world from thin air where as Jackson had the books and the world already created is something. What I am saying is the films are equally sprawling, equally jaw dropping and equally well planned and well developed.
There is something to be said for a flawless technical film and a flawless narrative. No it doesn't take a lot of risks and no there is not a ton of discussion on the defintion of their existence in the future or the politics or the military people. But what it focuses on is flawless, truly. The reason it doesn't get an A and it isn't, for me at least, considered with LOTR is because of the breeze through it all, the cliche'd characters, love story and narrative. If we compared this and District 9 the difference, besides the budget and director is the old school fim making approach that is executed perfecty. District 9 wanders outside of this and doesn't execute as well without it. If District executed the previous thoughts as well as Avatar than District 9 would be right with this film, but it's not, and it is the preeminent Sci Fi lare scale film in the last 5 years(LOTR).
12-28-09
Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino
A+
This is definitly the best Tarantino film since Pulp Fiction. I believe it's the best film of 2009. This is the culmination of Quentin's career paths, 'Basterds' takes everything he's learned along with his talent and creates a mesmerizing experience. Quentin's stength as a filmmaker has always been his writing, like most great auters, and the dialogue and the acting of it just knocks you out while staring at the screen. The Tarantino adage of lots of violence, and lots of mis-direction in the story-telling don't really apply to this movie. This movie has none of the usual non-linear lines of plot and it makes it extremely enjoyable even though I absolutely love that about Quentin's movies. The linear approach to telling the story creates character development and tension. The scene at the movie premiere where Diane Kruger walks in with a cast on her leg and three "Italian" friends, who happen to not speak a word of Italian is fantastic. If you took this scene, which is close to the end of the movie, and threw it as the opening scene, and created a non-linear time-line it would not have the same effect. This is stupid talking about the linearness of the story, that is not why this is so great.
The reason this is so great is the subtle nature of the performances, except mr. Pitt, and the quiet tension in the suspensful scenes. There is a huge risk that is taken by Quentin with this movie. First of all he has about 70% of it in foreign languages, but really he doesn't have a whole lot of 'killin Nazizs' which was promised, but rather has a ton of characters that have been emotionally effected by the way the Nazis do business. The film doesn't even have half as much violence and gun play that I expected. And even without that violence I still was competely convinced that the Basterds were violently sadistic to the Nazis and with that in mind I watched the final five minutes of the film with a huge grin on my face. I know that these Jewish soldiers want to murder everyone that has any connection to the Nazis, and I don't get to watch them kill tons of evil Nazis. Now maybe it is coincidence, the fact that Quentin just didn't think he needed a ton of violent Nazi death scenes in the film so by the end the audience is blood thirsty for these fuckers. I couldn't tell you, but when the two Basterds storm into Hitler's balcony and shoot him about a hundred times I got a huge rush. Then the two soldiers, who know that they need to leave before their dynamite blows their fucking legs off, just start taking out the whole crowd with an avalanche of machine gun fire. I understood why they didn't care about leaving, even though it makes no sense because the dynamite would've killed the Nazi bastards anyways. They didn't care because they were doing exactly what they wanted to do, and what they were brought there to do. They got to murder Hitler and shoot down tons of evil Nazi scum, I get it, I wouldn't have left either.
This film hits me the same way that Munich did. There is something about having Jewish blood and craving violence toward anti-semites. These two movies, Munich and Basterds, tap into that. I know that I loved Munich more than any non-Jew and so I don't know if that is getting in the way here. I really think that this movie is one of the top 10 of the decade and quite possibly the most original WWII film ever made. But my Jew blood could be overtaking this review slightly. So the non thematic part, and the non Nazi hatred part of the movie has to be excellent to temper my Jew Blood bias. And it is, oh it is. The dialogue is fantastic, the acting is exciting and very traditional, along with the pace and the camera work. This film is attempting to be a 1943 Cary Grant and Bogart masterpiece. The traditional old-school shots, the medium shots, the dialogue, and the pace are all very 1943. Even the sets and the action sequences are very traditional.
The acting is very deliberate, the speech of Diane Kruger and especially the Jew Hunter are very tradional in the sense of their projection and their pace of speech. I love this whole part of the film and love that Quentin decided to do it this way. The movie's heart is it's acting and dialogue and Quentin understood this and so he wanted to make it transporting and to match the old school nature of the dialogue with technique. The scene in the basement of a Nazi bar involving Kruger and a couple great actors who i don't know exemplify this. The scene is disproportiantely long and there isn't a lot of plot points being discussed. It is just a tense moment that involves real speech and a great tension filled final minute. They discuss things like drinking games, made up German films and childhood memories. There are three undercover Brits that are trying to get Diane Kruger, the only problem is there happens to be about half a dozen Nazis that all want to talk to her, they all want to fuck her and who could blame them. The undercover guys are trying to take their time and enjoy some drinks, trying notto be suspicious. The German soldiers are getting hammered and are trying to interogate these chaps because they just don't seem right, and they haven't heard of them. So now the one Brit undercover guy is being dragged down a spiral of lies and every new one he spits out the more tense the scene becomes. I couldn't believe what I was watching because of the lack of any kind of violence, no guns were drawn, there was just a beautiful woman and a bunch of guys trying to get to know each other and yet the scene was the most suspenseful of the film. The dialogue and acting carried that scene and Quentin never tries to show off with crazy music or camera work. There is a step-back approach that Quentin takes, that doesn't mean he wasn't as involved in the this film but he didn't slap Quentin all over it like Kill Bill. I think Pulp Fiction was carried by the dialogue and direction and the Kill Bill was carried by over stylized and over directed. This film Quentin is going back to his roots and what got him to the top of the mountain.
There are no grand themes, or subtle current event explorations. There is no great big picture ideal that Tarantino is trying to prove. This just happened to be extremely well written, they got the best cast they could and they created a world that audiences got to live in for a couple of hours. The fact that this was Quentin's most succeful box office hit is astounding to me. That fact mixed with the Dark Knight being second all time for gross revenue at the box office really gives me hope and faith in the American audience. Yes 'Law Abiding Citizen' made close to 100 million dollars while Hurt Locker barely hit 5 mil but all in all the movie goers in the country usually support great movies. The fact that Basterds made more than Pulp Fiction is really surprising because when that came out it was the talk of the world and it was being discussed everywhere and it was contrevsial and it was cool and hip. Yet it didn't make a whole lot of whoopie. Inglourious Basterds is a deliberately paced, dialogue riddled non english spoken film set in France, yet it made more money than Pulp Fiction, somehow the country is becoming much more cultured and film articulate. I can say I am proud to be an American film goer and can expect that no matter how strange and how different a movie is, if it's good it will sell.
There are cetain shots in Kill Bill that are truly magical. I'm thinking of the scene close to the end of the first where Thurman is walking through a restaurant/night club and the camera follows over head then swoops around the stage then follows her up the stairs. There is also a lot of quick close-ups and a whole lot of sound effects and loud music. It is ripping off the Samurai revenge films of the 70's and I love it for that. The Quentin Tarantino in Inglourious Basterds is much more subdued and much more dependent on his writing. Maybe he decided he was going to lay back somewhat after Kill Bill. Maybe he wrote the script and felt that is was so strong that who would just let it breathe. Maybe it just worked in his mind that he didn't need creative shots and lots of music and sound effects because of the movie he was making. Either way it was the best decision he made and really a non ego move and I love him for that. This movie is going to go down as one of the best of the decade and should go down as Tarantino's finest film making. No it is not a better film than Pulp Fiction, just because of the real life aspect of Pulp Fiction and the amazing speeches in that film
1-7-10
Master & Commander The Far Side of The World, Peter Weir and Patrick O'Brian
A
Pirates of The Caribbean made shit loads of cash at the box office. They made three of those films and together it grossed an inordiante amount of money, something like one a half billion dollars. Master and Commander cost 150 million and made 200 million. The Pirates of the Caribbean films are much more popular and, as described before, made about ten times the amount of money as Master and Commander. I wrote in a previous article that I felt relieved that a film like Inglourious Basterds did so well at the box office despite it's subtitle endused, dialogue filled artistic film making. The fact that Pirates of the Caribbean was so much more loved and watched than Master and Commander makes me retract my previous statement. This is the greatest nautical movie ever made. Yes better than Jaws, or Life Aquatic, or Crimson Tide.
First of all I think I have a bromance for Russell Crowe. Everything he is in I happen to love. I thought he was great as the family man, introspective science geek in The Insider. He was extremely likable and believable as a hockey captain in a small town in the film Mystery, Alaska. His greatest performance was in Ridley Scott's Gladiator, and to be honest with you, his role as Captain of an old english ship in this movie is just as good. He is anamored with 'duty' and tactics and as a great leader, and he is anarmored with a famed captain in the English fleet. He is asked by his men what makes this captain so great, and of course he happens to be a great leader of men more than a tactician. He uses guts and his fame to capture the respect of all the English sailors. He is thought of as the great hope for England against the Napoleonic fleet. By the end of the movie it seems as though Captain Jack Aubrey is really the better captain. Not only is he well respected but his has the same amount of courage as the famed captain with more smarts and a whole lot of charm. By the middle of the film I felt like I would travel to Indonisia in a life boat with Aubrey, Crowe is that great. It is not the writing that does this but the acting and the likability that Crowe has. He has this great ambition to track down the newer, faster larger French ship and stops at nothing to track it down. Through many requests to turn back by his friend, The Good Doctor and a small bout of insubordination his pushes on. They go all the way from England through the Western coast of South Africa, around Cape Horn and stop at the Gallapagos Islands. And through all of this the good captain never loses his ambition, is never derailed in his goal or his determination and good nature.
The story is simple, and I am starting to learn that just a small simple story can produce great results. They just need to track down this French ship and either destroy it or take for prize. What produces such a great movie are the different characters, the transporting effect of the cinematography and it's realsim in it's dialogue, it's details and the actual living on an old ship. It is not plot driven but driven by it's ambitious goal of putting us on the deck, the bowls and the cannon room of the ship. There is a great friendship at the middle of this film between Crowe and the ship's doctor and hobbyist. He loves all things science, philosophy and music. There are great scenes of the two playing violin and chelo in the captain's room. Here they discuss the intricacies of duty and leadership and ambition. The doctor discusses the corruption of leaders and does not put England's pride on such a high pedistal as the captain. They both pull eachother towards the middle of the spectrum. The captain calms his blind tracking of the French ship to help his friend even though that is not what the Captain handbook says to do. And the Captain gives the doctor some courage in battle and a better understanding of the nature of leadship. The thing that surprised me was the originality of the friendship and the destination it takes the two men. Usually films that involve a military leader make him out to be a death numb person who does not comprimise anything that will stop the mission. Here the leader is much more open to debate and advice and I like that about the film.
I do not that much about old english sea warfair but while watching this I could've believed that some photographer traveled back in time and just documented everything that went on. There is not one shot of CG and no special effects. The realism of the surrounding makes the characters more believable and thus makes the film that much better. The Pirates of the Caribbean films care nothing about realism, and that is part of their charm. But by putting such high standards for realism with in this film it makes the whole experience that much more rewarding by the end. I loved the Galapogas Islands scenes where the doctor and his young friend go and search for new species of creatures and the young kid starts to find a love and a passion for the adventure and the discovery. The whole part of the film where they are on Gallapagos is just special for me. I love that kind of thing, the Discovery Channel and reading National Geographic and other nature magazines. The discovery and the adventure of this film really ring true for me and put this film in the upper echelon of my favorite of all time.
All of the cinematography is astounding. The quick cuts during the battle scenes are great and the shot of the ocean transport the viewer and make them feel isolated and yet astounded by the vastness. The whole film is ambitous, the direction, the cinematography, the acting and the battle scenes. That ambition comes through and made me feel ambitous. I think this film should be considered as one of the great adventure films of all time and it is definitely up there for me.
1-8-10
Shoot the Piano Player, Francios Truffaut
A-
Ah, French New Wave cinema. The films that were playing in America around the time Shoot the Piano Player came out were usually all very stylish and involved cool cats in cool situations. Popular American cinema looked nothing like this film, this film had no Cary Grant, or Humphrey Bogart or Jimmy Stewart and involved no calm guy smoothly lighting a cigarette and telling of bad guys like they were a clump of dirt and he was a large silk blanket. In this film there are a lot of innovative qualities to the film making and the actual story. While watching the first part of this movie I really thought that I was watching an original Pulp Fiction. The bad guys were just talking about normal things, like where they bought their ties and how to deal with women. Vincent Vega and Sam Jackson were talking about Cheesburgers and how to deal with women. There's not a lot of violence but the dialogue, the situations, the characters are all any clichéd movie character you would see at the time but they were taken down of the pedistal and entered into a normal world. You have the brilliant musician who doesn't get along with his family.
Well this movie says, what happens if he were living in real life, because in real life if a couple of guys that were chasing his brother showed up at his work he wouldn't just light a cigarette and spew some sly shtick. And throughout the movie there are these scenes. The Piano Player, Edouard or Charlie is a very likable guy but not any kind of hero. He is a very talented piano player who doesn't like to do interviews and doesn't like being in big parties. So basically Cary Grant or Bogart couldn't pull this role off. He has a son and lives in a shity apartment with his son Fido. He used to play large theaters and get payed will but now he just plays in a small little beatknick coffee house. His wife was so caught in a hate with jealousy with her husband that she ended up jumping out of a window, in part because of Edouard. This guy is a lot like Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation or Larry David in any Larry David project. He is constantly second guessing and putting himself down and I love that about him.
The women in this movie are really great, much closer to real life than any Grace Kelly or Marlene Dietrich. They are all sexy and smart and think for themselves. Some of them are topless, some of them are anrgy and some of them are laughing but they are all believable. There is a flashback to the good times, or at least the top of his perfomance career. He is snagged by an agent and he goes from place to place performing and getting rave reviews. He proposes to his wife in a diner that she worked at. We don't even know they are dating at first he just seems like he is trying to get her attention and then ask her out but I guess it's a game they play. The agent is also in the diner and signs Charlie the same day, now that's a good day. There is a queote that is used that says something like I will love you until it turns to hate and I put my hat on and leave. What happens with his wife is she continues to stay even though she hates him. She theorizes that she is jealous of him and hates herself for it. She says that she hates herself and then crumples in a ball on the bed. He is about to leave and his thoughts are spoken, he thinks to himself he should say something, you idiot, say something and comfort her. But he doesn't and then she ends up on the pavement. So it isn't spoken or told why he stopped playing concerts and ended up a little beatknick bar but it must be because of the guilt that since he played those concerts he wa responsible for her death. Edouard is a great guy, he is witty, inteligent and has that self deprication that I love. There is a character development and the movie is really a character piece. His 2 brothers are bad guys who rob and kill and happened to steel loot from a couple guys they did the job with. Edouard has tried to put as much room as possible between himself and his family. But you can't run away from your family and they pull him into it whether he likes to or not.
The ending of the film is surprising because almost all films around that time had happy endings, the hero won or there was some kind of resolution to a problem or they achieve something. In this film Edouard has to run and hide with his family and hates that he has become exactly what he hated. His girlfriend comes back to tell him that he isn't in any trouble with the cops (he stabbed the owner of the bar after he tried to kill Eddy). The two crooks come up there and there is a shootout, which is awful but maybe that's how most shootouts were. The shot are literally just the guy shooting their guns, then they cut to the other guys walking and shooting then a car pulling away and then the girl falls down after being shot. She dies, and the 2 brothers get away with the cash. So Edouard ends up right back at the bar and is playing his piano, both women he has loved in his life are dead because of him and he literally resolved nothing. Strange ending but very heartbreaking. The dialogue could be transfered to today and not skip a beat, it is that original and interesting and funny. I loved this movie and especially the characters. The woman were sexy and easy to fall in love with, but also very independent and one of them turned out to be the hero of the film. Eddy tried to mind his own business, play his piano and fall in love. He ended up losing his love and ended up back at the bottom of the barrel for pianists.
There are two scenes that are simply fantastic. The one is the opening scene where Charlie's brother is running from the two crooks and starts walking next to a stanger and starts a wonderful converstation. They talk about woman and the stranger decides to spill his guts about his wife and his marriage because, well, he is a total stranger and who better to spill your guts to than a total stranger. The other is a scene where the two crooks pick up Charlie and his lover, they are not yet involved. The crooks start to talk about normal things, all the while they are kidknapping two people because they are chasing down thousands of dollars. They all get into a very heated debate about woman and how they are all the same. The men share a laugh but the woman starts to defend woman but especially herself and this is where Charlie falls in love. They end up getting pulled over and the couple walks away and bids a cordjule goodbye to the two crooks. What a fantastic scene.
1-6-10
Punch-Drunk Love, Paul Thomas Anderson
A-
Barry Egan is a perfect character in a nearly perfect film. Barry is played by a nearly perfect Adam Sandler who is funny without being ridiculous and is melancholy without being depressing. Barry could've taken a turn that a lot of characters like him take, from Charlie Kaufman in Adaptation, to any Larry David thing, to Kusak in Being John Malkovich. All of those characters had the same personality traits as Barry from the anti social nature and dating problems and a lack of being able to express themselves. Just an overall lack of self esteem. But the difference is that Barry is all these things but also personable and he has an exciting trait that is not that far from a Jake LaMota. He can fight, and he can fight angry. Barry is the focus on the film and unlike everyother PTA film Punch Drunk Love is a quick hour and a half. PTA uses technical aspects of his expertise to enhance the film in a lot of ways. There is the exposition of the lense that when there is a bright light the shot is filled with a colorful bluish rainbow. This exposure is found throughout the movie and is unmistakable and looks great. He also uses a musical technique where the dialogue is second to the music. There is a scene in Barry's office where a lot is going on, and the music is so loud, and the beat is intertwining with the dialogue and actor's beat. I felt Barry's anxiety, there was so much going on and yet I couldn't concentrate on what was really being said. I think that is why PTA did this with the music, to add anxiety to certain scenes, it is also really great rhythmically and the whole film takes on that rhythm. The technical aspects do take over a lot of the film, I think PTA was taking some risks but it was exciting and I will always trust a talented director and just go where is trying to take me.
PTA, I have found, likes to add very subtle almost inconspicous themes and elements and archetiypes to stories. In this film there is an accordian piano that Barry finds at the beggining of his story. It seems like this piano is bad luck, or maybe Barry is bad luck, because when Barry is checking out the street, drinking his coffee, a car hits a pot hole or maybe it just got hit by magic but either way it starts flipping like crazy. The Piano is then dropped off right in front of Barry. Basically it sets up what this Piano is going to bring to Barry's life and Barry will risk it because ther is something about this thing. Throughout the movie Barry plays with it during anxious times and it happens to be a best friend of him but also happens to be involved in all the bad events. It stays in his office which is where a forklift knocks over a bunch of crates which knocks over a bunch of dudes. It is in the office when a woman starts screaming at Barry over the phone that he is dead. It is in his office where he is embarresed by his sister.
The piano is symbolic of Barry's baggage. Barry seems to destroy a lot things where ever he is. He is full of rage and violently shows this rage off in situations that he can't hold it back. He destroys a large screen glass 2 sided door. He destroys a bathroom at a restaurant. He also destroyed another sliding glass door when they were kids, this fact is constantly brought up around his sisters. His sisters cause a lot of this pent up rage in Barry's life and after spending only a couple of minutes with them in the movie I can see why. But the piano is representative of Barry's anger, or baggage, or maybe it is just a mystical piano that helped bring him and his lover together. PTA is all about serendipity and maybe it just happened that this piano is destructive and is bad luck but it put everything in play for Barry. It brought on the woman and her man who are trying to extort Barry. It brought on his idea of traveling and saving up frequent flyer miles. It also brought his lover into his life.
This movie is a character study mixed together with a beautiful love story. The love that Barry feels for his lady friend brings him immense power, it really puts his rage into a well organized part of his psyche. He will use this frightening power only to protect his love. Barry does not just get lucky and this woman starts to love him, he actually fights for her in a sense. He decides to go and see her in Hawaii. Now this is not just about her because Barry is scarred that the guys that are trying to extort him are going to keep beating him and rob him. This is never brought up, but once again that damn piano put things into place to force Barry to go to Hawaii. It is almost fate, I know that is what PTA once us to believe, he wants us to love this film and love the destiny factor and the loveliness of the film. I do love it but it is all preplanned, the whole love story. That is what he is saying by making this Piano into a mystical thing that created this whole distininct world. Now I would believe that this piano thing is just a random piece of music. It is purely a symbol of Barry's baggae, I would belive this except for the car that flipped over after it's delivery. So basically this is destiny that this piano be sent to Barry, it is there to help create this love interest and to create a love story. So really PTA wants us to believe in serendipity and luck and chance but he set this whole thing up. That doesn't mean it's less of a movie but it does mean that there was a planned path that was supposed to be taken and was helped along by this piano.
The film was shot with a subdued appreciation for the performances. There were no crazy shots like that in Boogie Nights. There were no fickle techniques. The camera was just there to be there and to watch what is going on. It is used artistically during there visit to Hawaii, it is used in a romantic way, almost a musical way. There is a shot where the two meet and we just see their silohettes against a sunset and tons of other people roaming by them. The whole movie has a musical vibe, it's a great progression for Barry and it's always interesting and beautiful to watch. I think this was PTA's musical, romantic, up beat fun flick. And it works.
1-10-10
WALL-E, Andrew Stinton
B+
The best Pixar movie ever. All of their tricks are here, all of their cute little methods of story telling and creation. The Pixar character development is all here, the learning experience, it's all here! It's right in your face, these obvious Pixar things are right in my face, I hate these things! I hate the formulaic method for creating these films. You get your male character, you give him some kind of disformity; ie. Think of the Old Guy in Up(he's old), the fish in Finding Nemo, the cowboy in Toy Story, all of the Incredibles have these things they have to live with. Basically they all have some kind problem that they were born with or were stuck with, they didn't do something that created that. Then these characters usually have to leave their comfort zone, they have to make it on their own and work through the plot. They end up learning great things about themselves, save the day and make everyone cry. Somehow they do this in every movie and it still works. But to me WALL-E is the best, and I love Toy Story.
WALL-E isn't very funny, it's not very melodramatic, and it isn't over the top cute. It is just very moving, and what makes me love it is that it is moving without a speaking character. WALL-E doesn't say a word I ever understand in the film and yet I found myself welling up a couple of times during the movie. I was so completely invested in WALL-E and his love interest, more so than any other Pixar film. In all of their films you can see that this is just a stupid kids movie with a happy ending, it's beautiful and original but it's still predictable. The thing that makes this so unpredictable is that I cared for the characters, and they weren't human, they weren't flesh and blood, they couldn't talk. So that made the stakes higher and thus made the payoff greater and made me root much more. There are also great subtleties in this film, great visuals. They lay off the goofy kid sound effects, you know the ones I mean, the character slips on shoes and then a "Doink!!" So it's a strikingly beautiful movie, both visually and emotionally.
Now the whole first half hour is basic and not beautiful and not exciting. It is just an introduction, a window into the world we live in the future. We see it through the eyes of a non judgemental, resourceful, romantic little mute robot who smashes trash in his little tummy. Yes that's right he is a romantic, resourceful trash compacter. You become attached to him because of the brilliance of the film maker. He realized that by isolating the robot you isolate the audience and that means you can throw dull at them so they can appreciate what is coming a lot more. You are stuck on a destroyed, brown earth for half an hour with a non talking trash compacter.
He shows us what we should appreciate because he is in love with an old musical maybe a little like Bandwagon and that is his escape. It is great because people are sitting in giant movie theaters watching this fantastic story with fantastic visuals and still complain about it, while this guy watches a crappy 1940's musical on a broken screen in a shit hole. We end up on a giant spaceship where the whole human race lives. Now somehow there are children here but none of the humans interact physically with one another. They don't walk, they don't touch. They just hover around on designated paths until they need to eat then when they need to sleep. It is hard understand why they are like this but they have been on this ship for 500 years so nobody alive during this film would understand any other way to live. It is un heard of to move from your designated path, or to get off you couch. The fat asses built these robots to follow protocol and do all the difficult work while the fat asses now follow protocal and... well follow protocal. That is just what they do, there is something philosophical there but obviously they don't delve in to deeply, this is a Pixar film remember.
The story is nothing to analyze and the characters are nothing to analyze, the amazing thing about this film is that I cried a couple times. I cried over a fake non talking trash compacter. Not only is he fake he is animated! Not only is he animated he is in a fucking made up spaceship 500 years in the future! This either speaks to my emotional fragility or something truly remarkable that only happens once in a long while. The guys at Pixar actually pulled off what they have been trying to do for 10 years. They made a cynical, young adult male weep for one of their cute made up characters. I don't know if it is worth going into the subtlty of the wall-e and how they make create a connectin between him and the audience. There are small things that are hard to analyze and maybe not worth it. Should we go and analyze Mozart's masterpieces, yes they make me cry on occasion. Should we go and analyze every centimeter of Da Vinci's sculpture's? No we should appreciate their syntex and their motives and just understand that they are artists and what they do is what they do. The only thing you can truly analyze is what they did to you. Yes I can analyze the film and any film but I mean the specificality of anaylzing something truly magical between a human and a made up animated trash compacter, is it worth it? So I say that this movie was a huge surprise, I think it is my favorite Pixar film and is an instant classic. This should be what they look back on the way we look back on Snow White.
1-10-10
Rear Window, John Michael Hays
A
Even beautiful, upstanding, hardworking people can become obsessed with something as intoxicating as watching other people's lives. Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window follows these two beautiful people who become so anamored with watching neighbors out of Jimmy Stewart's rear window that there lives become revolved around it. Jimmy Stewart is stuck in a wheel chair and rarely ever stops watching these people. He never gets into his bed, he never tries to get out of his apartment, and he can't even eat dinner without catching a peek. At the start of the movie his beautiful but too perfect girlfriend, played by Grace Kelly, is contemplating what kind of relationship they have. Jimmy is also contemplating it, like I said he thinks she is too perfect. For some reason these characters just felt so much more real than characters in other films of the time. They talk about what normal people talk about, they don't sling one liners at each other, and they don't have something perfect to say at every flick of the tongue. So being able to relate to them and actually emote with what they are going through makes it a lot more fun to watch them to become more and more obsessed with watching. Now the film doesn't distort or add too many plot lines, because with the love story, and the murder mystery and all the windows and lives being watched there is a lot going on. But Hithcock makes sure that each one of the neighbors adds something to the plot or the theme or even just the atmosphere. The only real excess is having a beautiful blond dance around in her underwear, but as men that is part of the story.
Unlike North By Northwest the plot lines, character assumptions and dialogue is all completely based in the real world. The characters are all based in real personalities. Like I said before, no overly suave lines by every male person. All of the woman are surprisingly believable. There is a woman who is all alone and is exceedingly depressed. She actually tries to commit suicide. Now suicide back in those days was a major transgression so for her to be a sympathetic character is surprising but also excellent. The story of the murderer and how he went about killing his wife and covering it up is not some comic book master villain plan, it is real and something that could be understood and solvable. Doing all of this believability helped Hitchcock create a supremely tight thrilling two hours.
I was stuck in that world and just being pulled along because of the reality of the situation and the events. In some thrillers there is something too well thought out or just too intelligent for the characters and it works as a hammer that knocks you on the head. It wakes you up. The idea of a thriller is to glue the audience in their seats and don't let them think or concentrate on anything else but the plot and clues. Rear Window does this. The first hour is a great set up, it introduces the kind of movie it is going to be, the kind of characters and shots and story we are going into. Then it takes you deeper and deeper until every frame is exciting and nerve racking.
They had one giant set that they shot on. Pitch perfect way they shot it. They always had the viewpoint of Jim Stewart's rear window. You never got any other perspective or view point which was a complex risk. If the audience doesn't get to see something important they usually freak out. Like here there is a scene where the bad guy and Grace Kelly go behind a wall and something happens. There are two other hidden moments behind that wall that we really never quite find out what is going on. I like it and it is risky but the viewpoint is correct and works amazingly well. I would have to say the comedy is just pure wit, no laugh out loud moments. The dialogue using this wit works because it comes from two witty actors. The acting is just as pitch perfect as the plot and the writing. When there is no distinction between why the dialogue is so great is when you know the writing and acting is perfect. This film could be remade today, it could literally be films on a single set with two big actors and there would be no way to make it better. There is nothing we have today that can add onto the story or the effects or the acting or the writing. And that is what is great. My favorite Hitchcock movie.
1-14-10
Seven Samurai, Akira Kurasowa
A
Ah, Samurai movies, we love you so. I love you. There is something about the foriegn nature of their methods in battle and their ethos. They represent something that us Americans aren't, they are loyal, they are suicidal in their fight to protect ambitious moral compasses. They also fight with bad ass swords. I can't lie, I have only seen maybe a couple of samurai flicks so I am no expert. But this movie is not just a great samurai film, it is a masterpiece of epic proportions. It is three and a half hours long and somehow it is filled with a basic story and a simple plot line. So why could it be three and a half hours if it is so simple? I mean there aren't any grand special effects, there are no historic fight sequences or epic bloody battles. But it carries something through it that makes the three and a half hour experience part of the theme or the ideal of the film. The length just reeks of ambition and so do the samurai's goals and ideals. You see the samurai are driven by an ambition that is rare now, in America.
They are ambitious in their strive to uphold what they live for, honor. Yes it's corny, honor, but that is what they're striving for, to prove that what they live for and what those that have come before them have preserved. It is so foriegn at first, this idea that these guys are going to go and risk their lives to protect a town full of people that don't care for them much. The idea that they will go and sacrifice basic things we don't much cherish; food, safety, money. They are really sacrificing everything to uphold everything. It becomes clear after a while and it becomes something that is really easy to admire. To admire how honor is something that is worth dying for, because honor is extremely rare to find or even to comprehend. By the end of the flick I felt like I had just witnessed some kind of epiphany, something that sparked a small little part of my brain that I had never opened. So I can easily say that this is one of the greatest films ever created. Of the million or so movies made this is something that has no equal and won't ever have one, and that is honorable.
The start of the film was so odd to me. The farmers in the village are so strange and frustrating. They just sit on the ground with their heads down, all in a circle, and scream and cry. They are so scarred and so distraught and they deal with it by having a cohesive nervous breakdown. I just hated it and completely looked down on these people. One guy had an idea to fight or to get courage to solve the problem and everyone just started screaming and crying and threw him out of the circle. These people are jokes, that's what I thought. They end up being told by the granddad that they should go and hire samurai. So they go to a village and start searching, and even in their search they start to drain even more on my nerves. Somehow by luck an old samurai who later tells us that he has never won a battle agrees to help. They end up gathering enough guys to fight. All of the guys they recruit all have a great introduction. The older man cuts his hair and then puts on a priest's robe to dope a theif out of a shack. Another samurai is chopping wood, just because a man asked, and when he is asked if he is a samurai he says, with a japanese wit, that right now is he a wood chopping samurai. Another one is an expert swordsman who declines at first but then agrees. One by one we start to realize that these guys are doing this mission for something that is completely assanine now a days. They are doing it because of their honor. The idea that they were born into this role to protect and uphold their word is something that rings true througout this movie.
All of the samurai have great and differing personalities. At the time this movie came out I would have to guess it was the best movie ever created. All of the characters were so original and well brought out. By the end you know what anyone one of them would do in a certain situation or how they would handle a problem. I love that they are all similar in their goal but so different in their personalities. It points to almost a religious aspect that no matter who you are just one common thread of humility and code can bring you together. The battle scenes are old and so far away from what we are spoiled with now that it isn't worth analyzing them. The sheet they use to tack off the killed bandits is great and ads to the thrilling nature of the battle sequences. The planning of the protection of the town is great. You get to follow every step of their plan, their is no magically built wall or plan that we didn't get to see planned out, and I think that is bold and interesting.
Throughout the movie their is this theme that I have talked about before of pre disposition. The samurai were born into this code of ethics and these higher ideals, yet the farmers were born into a life of humility and peasentry. They are not heros and don't want to be, somehow these people never consider breaking the mold or challenging the staus quo. The old way and the modern process of living life is never brought up or played with. These people had no choice in what they could live for, or how they could live. I can't say I appreciate it but I can say it is very interesting to analyze and helps to the understanding of the film. Four of the samurai die in the end. They died for something that is intangible and is vacant in todays world. If they died the same way today, say a construction worker died for trying to protect a man who's house he built. That guy and the people around him would say he was stupid for trying to protect some person who could;ve done the same, who didn't even appreciate him at the time or pay him. So really the only reason I felt pity and honored for the samurai who died is because of the world that Kurosawa had built during the film. Something so foreign, an entire ideal that is rare, was put on film and I lived it and somehow I understood and felt appreciative of the fallen samurai. That is awesome and truly inspiring. This movie is without a doubt the greatest Japanese film ever and is defintely a masterpiece that will never be thought of as unoriginal or systematic. It will never be thought of as outdated.
1-15-10
Up In the Air, Jason Reitman
A-
George Clooney, in our world, is probably the definition of cool, suave, charismatic. Clooney is the epitamy of what a celebrity should aspire to be. Yet in Reitman's film George is really just another guy...And I believed it. He is from Minnesota, he has been traveling more above the clouds than a cabbie can take fare in a lifetime. He delicately describes his lifestyle as, "being surrounded." Yes, litteraly, he is surrounded, but not in the context he is trying to justify it in. Clooney is a professional fucker, he fires people, a lot of people, face to face. He is fucking great at it. He is so damn good I might take a job, knowing I will get fired, just to have the experience of this master thespian showing me the proverbial door. It is amazing how well these 'firings' are written and acted. In all of film history there are certain firing scenes that I can distinctly remember. Jerry being fired in Jerry Mcguire, or Nick Cage's drunk ass being politely thrown out in Leaving Las Vegas, and of course Milton in Office Space. All of those are extremely memorable and fantastically performed, but, they were all just a begining or an end of a film. Up in the Air put the firings in the heart of the movie, using them as thematic candy and acting dynamite. Now Clooney is great at firing people but not everyone in his business is as good. He has to burden a small, cute little thing called Anna Kendrick, who is so perfect for this role that from now on she is permanantley type-cast. This is where the meat of the story take place, all the motifs, themes, plot, character development, it all comes from these two being crammed together in a plane like a shark and pirhana in a fish tank.
The movie swims through the screen so easily that it could be considered a perfect film. There are no loop holes, there is no lack of emotion or humor, the acting and writing is top notch. It is hard to describe something as perfect because that can only be a definition of whatever you are describing. Up in the Air is only perfect in it's medium, it's potential. This is not the best movie ever made, but that doesn't mean it can't be perfect. The world and peramaters that have been created in the film make what can be graded, and analyzed and critiqued. Within that world this film is pretty much perfect. The camera is seemless in it's movement, it is stable around the women and moving around Clooney. The camera is never very blunt or pretentous and that goes for the direction. He never goes for too much melodrama, there aren't large scale violent or emotional sequences. The story and film itself is itself, it is completely on it's own, it never tries to go outside the boundaries of it's characters, dialogue or overall themes. Jason Reitman is the next Paul Thomas Anderson, he knows his film, and always keeps the elements of them in their cages. In Thank you For Smoking there is a tounge-in-cheak humor and an irony that meshes with the charm of the script and protagonist. And with that feel for the film Reitman never strays away from those themes and the pieces of the story. He never created a slapstick sequence or scene with the humor, he never overused the tounge in cheek elements.
In Up in the Air Reitman deliberately makes the audience feel compelled to root for all of these people, Clooney, Kendrick and Farmiga. They are all interconnecting and they happen to be following in eachothers footsteps. Clooney has been alone for most of his life, and once he meets Farmiga he starts to learn about love and relationships. Farmiga has already gone through finding how to build a relationship and find love, and once she finds the lone wolf, Clooney, she loves the idea of living like him. Kendrick is following in Farmiga's footsteps, she is younger but learns from Farmiga that the ambition diminishes and the looks as well. They are all moving through the same experiences each one of them has gone through, and once I realized this I understood that there is a circle of life type theme. The characters are growing, learning and opening up, which is what every great movie needs.
The two women in Clooney's life both help him to move into the next phase in his life. He understands what he has been missing once he meets and builds a relationship with Farmiga. He has been missing non-conformist, courageous abilities that you get when you fall in love. He starts to love her and she pulls him out of his direct lane to nowhere, then his heart gets broken because he let go of his rules. She unknowingly helped pull him out of his traveling lonely coma by sleeping with him, and traveling with him. She didn't think the guy that goes and encourages people about never becoming attached to anyone or anything would fall for her. Then Anna Kendrick opens his eyes to the fact that he is getting old, he is close to being on his way out of the relevant door, and this boosts his ambition and his drive to find whatever he needs to find.
Jason Reitman
2-7-10
The Thin Red Line - Terrence Malick
A-
Terrence Malick is a poet. He convinces and appeals to studios to give him tens of millions of dollars to make poetic movies. He is the epitamy of a visionary, he suffocates you with it. His direction and writing exudes confidence and to live in that confidence, that vision, that poetry for three hours is really amazing. The Thin Red Line is by far the most stunning war film I've ever seen. It takes into a few soldiers's philosophy and world view. It then puts their outlook on life and their character and humanity to test during one long battle. It succeeds in it's gravitas and thesis. The film believes that they all
