Sunday Morning Movies – The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Not being a huge fan of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, I wasn’t terribly keen on seeing the prequel, especially the story is smaller and perhaps less interesting then the huge events that take place in the “main event” series of Tolkien’s work.  Doubly worse was finding out that this relatively tiny children’s book had been somehow bloated beyond all recognition into a three-part, three-hour a piece movie extravaganza that was going to suck up nine hours of my life.  I don’t want to seem cynical, but considering Peter Jackson’s relative failure to reach the heights of success he had with the original trilogy, one might think it a desperate gambit to get back in the A-list game (and get some easy money) to revisit it.  That’s harsh, though, as he clearly loves the source material, which is a problem. 

Iron Man 3

The Marvel Machine rampages on in Iron Man 3, which is already taking in incredible amounts of money because, I think, Marvel is exceptionally good at product management.  It says something about the skill of digital effects companies that you can make a solid action blockbuster product without the specific skill-set of an “action director”, and thus we have reached the point where the talent is brought in for their ability to keep a certain level of quality, not take risks and, most importantly, keep the writing snappy.  Though some of the films have had minor aesthetic differences, they all more or less look the same:  generally bright, inoffensive, with a dash of pop art stylization without going full-blown Ang Lee.  The last two entries, especially, have had one major authorial difference and that’s in the writing.  The Avengers largely kept to Joss Whedon’s not inconsiderable talent for wit, and now Iron Man 3 flows right into Shane Black’s wheelhouse.  The fact that it’s distinctive is down almost solely to the script, and if it doesn’t set it necessarily to a higher standard than other Marvel fare, it’s at least different. 

The Place Beyond The Pines

Derek Cianfrance’s previous film – and the only of his I have seen – was Blue Valentine, a somewhat inelegant but certainly affecting (really trying to avoid “raw” here) two-hander about the blossoming and breakdown of a relationship.  What it lacked in visual interest (grainy, handheld, American Indie by-the-numbers) it made up for with pacing and, of course, performances.  That picture worked through incredible acting, and it had to, as there wasn’t much else to rely on.  It was an exercise in reactions, movement, and glances.  It was a picture of big emotions because of its small proportions.  His follow-up, The Place Beyond the Pines, takes a different tack, although one suspects he was hoping to work within the same emotional model.  It’s a sprawling, 140-minute saga, with a triptych structure that unfortunately makes it feel like it is going on for a lot longer than it’s already lengthy running time.  It’s a shame he couldn’t have learned a lesson from his last film, then, and realized that Big Emotions don’t necessarily need a Big Story. 

Pain & Gain

When I read Pete Collins’ bizarre, incredible “Pain and Gain” story, recounting the events in the mid-90s of the “Sun Gym Gang”, my first thought was, “this is a Coen Brothers film.”  The elements were all there: deluded moron criminals, ever increasing amounts of absurdity, horrific events that seamlessly combine tragedy and farce.  I already knew at the time that it was set to be Michael Bay’s next picture, however, and when I eventually saw the trailer, I predicted it would be crass, stupid, and not at all respectful of the real crimes or the victims.  I was basically right about all of that, and yet…

The Twilight Saga – An Autopsy

Easy is nice.  The world is difficult and indifferent, and as such there’s nothing wrong with opting for something easy when you can.  I get that.  I’m not against that.  But there’s “easy” and then there’s “easy”.  The Twilight Saga film franchise has, it turns out, been easy in a way that’s so unbelievably lazy and dull that I can’t imagine how a thinking human being can find it entertaining.  People talk a lot about liking films they can just “turn their brains off” and watch, but surely there are some basic elements of storytelling that require at least some semblance of a conflict to make it work, even if it is perfunctory or dumb or obvious.  I finally watched the final part of the series, Breaking Dawn Part 2, and I have come to the conclusion that nothing at all of interest happened in the 9 or so hours of time I spent watching them over the years.  Of the many, many problems that have plagued this $3 billion franchise, the worst is quite possibly that it plays like a young child’s imagining of a narrative for his toys.  My incredible, adorable nephew was once playing with some toy cars and figurines, and was explaining to me, “this truck has to get over here so he can see the cows!”  “That’s great”, I said, “but where’s the conflict? The truck just has to get over there to see the cows, and that’s it.”  He was all of five years old at the time, so what did I expect?  I should add I said it in a playful way and I’m sure he didn’t pick up on my criticism, so I didn’t rudely offend a child.  Still, there’s nothing to what he was trying to achieve, and that, in a nutshell, is what The Twilight Saga has turned out to be. 

Roger Ebert 1942-2013

Roger Ebert is dead.  This isn’t really a shock, and yet it is a total shock.  A few days ago we found out that the cancer he had been battling for the better part of a decade, and which ultimately claimed his voice and his jaw, had come back, as it is wont to do.  I didn’t expect it to happen so suddenly after he enumerated all of his plans for the next year so recently, but here we are.  So in memory of the man and the critic, let’s talk about me.

The Best Films of 2012: Part III

Part I is here.  Part II is here.

10.  Not Fade Away

David Chase, of The Sopranos fame, makes his directorial debut with this strange and glorious ode to that most tired of subjects, rock and roll in the 1960s.  Clearly drawing from a number of very personal memories, the film begins with the dweeby Douglas (John Magaro) seeing the Rolling Stones on television.  The trajectory from this is pretty standard for this type of film.  Douglas has a crush on a Grace (Bella Heathcote), and he’ll win her over through the band, he has disputes with the frontman Eugene (Jack Huston), the culture shock of the late 60s doesn’t sit well with his father (James Gandolfini), and on and on.  Despite the familiarity, the performances and the writing breathe a lot of life and subtlety into even the most cliché developments (Heathcote is especially good).  Beyond that, though, and the real treasure of Not Fade Away is it’s peculiar style.  It’s not easy to get into in the beginning, but somewhere around the first band rehearsal it begins to click: this is all about rhythm, and not a tight one at that.  The editing is incredibly elliptical – scenes seem to wander off and then bleed into another.  There are gaps in the narrative, and not so much in the sense that it is disorienting but that this is a progression of moments and memories.  That word “memories” is important, because I can’t remember a time where a film has felt more like a series of memories that were happening in the now.  The present-tenseness is key, and in that sense, virtually every scene becomes its own mini-pop song.  It’s all part of the whole narrative, sure, but also self-contained.  In its final scenes, the reality bleeds into hazy myth, and the disembodied sometime narrator becomes corporeal and demonstrative of the power of music as an engine for living.  There are very few films that understand rock and roll quite like this one.

Best Films of 2012: Part II

20.  Holy Motors

Having made it so high on so many Year End lists, I feel inclined to explain here why Leos Carax’s Holy Motors is only at number 20.   To synopsize the film would be madness, as there is no “plot” to speak of, but it boils down to an actor (Denis Lavant, truly one of the acting treasures of our age) moving from appointment to appointment to “act”, though seemingly he’s playing roles in real life or perhaps not.  The film is comprised of a series of disjointed scenarios that never have anything to do with another, and we’re never sure quite what is real and what is fake or if anything can be “real” or “fake”.  We are treated to a series of occasionally dazzling, and even sometimes moving, sequences involving everything from a sewer dweller kidnapping a model, a motion capture performance dance (my favourite visual moment), a father dropping off his daughter, and seemingly old friends meeting in an abandoned building while one sings.  Lavant is glorious, and while it should surprise nobody that he won’t get any real recognition in American awards seasons, it’s still a shame.  So, here’s the minor problem with it:  I don’t know what it means.  I know it’s a cop-out, and it doesn’t even necessarily have to mean anything, but I wasn’t wowed by every sequence (though they were always interesting).  Individually I think there’s a lot to pick apart, but I would have to see it again and possibly more times after that to come to the conclusion of whether it’s just a smattering of ideas or if it all coheres together into something greater.  As it stands, it’s at the very least a compendium of exciting and sometimes ingenious thoughts, all worth considering on their own terms.  Also, if you’re into liking weird shit because it’s cool to like weird shit, well I guess you’ll love this.  It is better than that, of course, I’m just not sure yet how much better.

Best Films of 2012: Part I

After last year’s overly indulgent Top 30 countdown, I had fully intended to cut back this year.  If I didn’t reduce it to a Top 10 and maybe an Honorable Mention list (placed alphabetically, of course), then at most a Top 20.  However, as nobody probably noticed, neither my blogging partner nor I have posted very much in the last four months. Indeed most of the films that made it on my list I never wrote about here.  So I’m keeping the thirty film format this year, but I swear, next time around I’ll keep up with the writing a bit more and that way you can see what I thought of individual films and the ranking of the End of the Year list just happens to be a fun diversion rather than me trying to express thoughts on the movies I actually liked throughout the year.

The Expendables 2

When the new recruit to the rag-tag group of buffed up mercenaries presumably called “The Expendables” is asked why he left the military to join, he relays a story about being stuck for three hours in a firefight in Afghanistan.  He called for aerial support but his superiors wouldn’t allow it for fear of harming the locals.  Several of his fellow soldiers died “for nothing”, and to top it all off, his superiors killed the stray dog he had adopted.  This fear of the military institution and the lionization of the fighting man is reminiscent of classic, Reagan-era Stallone in Rambo: First Blood Part II, and indeed there’s nothing about The Expendables 2 that doesn’t just wish it was living in those halcyon days of pumped up heroes righteously killing en masse to hold up the classical values of American masculinity.