Month: May 2008

I agree with Jeff: Arnab sucks.

Comments don’t show up any more, and most movies are really bad.

make page work now

I’m not sure Teeth deserves its own thread (I tried posting a comment elsewhere but Word Press wouldn’t let me) but there’s something slyly (and comically) subversive about this story of a teenager, a good Christian girl who preaches abstinence and chastity, who discovers her vagina is blessed with a bite (a nuclear power plant forever looms in the background). It is crude and crass (there are a copious number of severed penises), but the film could also be read as a post-feminist, coming-of-age, “superhero-esque” origin story of a serial killer with a code (a la Showtime’s underrated “Dexter”) who targets brutal, oppressive, sexually abusive misogynists (teenage boys, wacky gynecologists, dirty-old-men). Though a favorite at Sundance in 2006, it didn’t do too well at the box office . . . will audiences be willing to line up for Teeth II???

I got out to see Mamet’s latest, Redbelt, which he refers to as an update of the classic fight flick, and it’s a strong homage, for better and worse. We follow a scraping-by, virtuous jujitsu master/instructor Mike Terry (the reliably great Chiwetel Ejiofor) who’s trapped–by some scheming and unreliable Hollywood types, an ambitious wife, mounting debts, and his own bullheaded determination to follow a fighter’s code–into a choice between competition or the loss of everything he holds dear. Besides Ejiofor, there’s a great cast (particularly regulars Ricky Jay and Joe Mantegna, clearly delighted to be foul-mouthed lowlifes throwing their weight around), and for about 2/3 of the picture the dialogue and plotting are knotty and delightful, allowing us plenty of time to chew on what’s happening, and to read Terry against the grain: he’s calm, determined, likable, “perfect”–and perhaps misguided, foolish, selfish, and so on. For a good long while, the idea of living by a code seems both virtue and vice, and the film buzzes on that tension.

Then, in its last third, people do a lot less talking and start throwing fists and feet instead of four-letter words and opaque aphorisms, and I don’t think that’s necessarily what I want from a Mamet film. It becomes a fight flick, not entirely predictable but tonally, thematically, and (alas) ideologically in line with the kinds of sentimental affirmations of the “loser” whose code (backed up by his real talent) is worth sticking to.

Meh. But great fun for a good portion of its running time, and so I’d suggest a rental, for sure. But a far, far, far more interesting (although admittedly very different) take on the foolish virtue of sticking to one’s idealism can be found in the ink-black Danish comedy Adam’s Apples, which follows the religious Ivan (Mads Mikkelsen), a man impervious to any disruptions in his belief in the goodness of humanity, in the inevitable success of turning the other cheek, in the power of meek acceptance and affirmation of everyone around him. Ivan bedevils one of his ex-con wards Adam (Ulrich Thomsen), a neo-Nazi who puts up a photo of Hitler in his small room, who stares dumbfounded as Ivan blithely misreads or just plain misses the malice in the actions all around him, who develops a seething passion aimed at breaking Ivan’s belief. It’d be entirely worth seeing for its casual, almost joyful misanthropy, and it is often laugh-out-loud funny. But I was even more taken by its unwillingness to affirm or flatly refute Ivan’s beliefs; rather, the film draws even more pointed laughs from the possibility that a buffoonish faith might actually have force in one’s life, even if it’s never anything but buffoonish. What starts as a vicious parody in the end seems a far more complicated, still very funny and biting investigation of faith.

After the despair that Chelsea fans (myself included) feel after last night’s Champions League final, at least an excuse to connect the loss to movies. Someone on a Chelsea fan blog linked each Chelsea player to a classic of Soviet cinema:

Cech – The Diamond Arm – Gaidai 1968
That double save in the 1st half and he saved a penalty Continue reading Soviet Cinema and Soccer

Does anyone know of good sources on the material production of US movies, both studio and independent? I’m particularly interested in the treatment of actors as workers. This became salient recently when a friend who is a union rep. with SAG told me about a multi-union wildcat strike on the set of a David O. Russell movie (which sounds like a train wreck waiting to happen). There are apparently complicated rules about pension funds and how much of a film’s financing has to be put in escrow to pay actors before filming can begin, and so on. This is an area I know next to nothing about, so if anyone can suggest a source for this kind of information, I’d be grateful.

I’m amazed to say this, but a film based on a television cartoon, a film with an excess of production energy and an equally-excessive layer of dipshit dialogue, a film edited with an eye toward epileptic shock, a film with a lot of jokes predicated on a hammy fat kid, a film with about fifty chimpanzee reaction shots …. it isn’t half-bad. In fact, it’s maybe three-quarters-good. I had steeled myself for teeth-gritting ennui as Max stared with empty goggle eyes through the 2+ hours of frantic Speed Racer nonsense. But this film was incessantly pleasing to the eye, a candy-store of colors, clever anime-inspired and/or loopily-inventive cinematic tricks, and uncampy affectionate recreation of mediocre-cartoon tropes. I hereby nominate Spritl and Chim as easily the most entertaining “irritating-kid-and-animal sidekicks” in the history of cinema, by which I mean the only irritating-kid-and-animal sidekicks one would even want to see. Anthony Lane in the New Yorker repeats an old Groucho Marx joke as a way of criticizing the film’s primary audience as four-year-olds — I guess I’m in touch with my inner four-year-old, ’cause this was way more fun than anyone has a right to expect.

Oh, and the central notion that corporations are evil was a pleasant ‘though (see Iron Man discussion) self-contradicting message for a big-budget technospectacle to embrace. There was surprisingly little (if any?) product-placement in the film (‘though the ramped-up pitch to kids for all things Speed began at the ticket counter, where we all got “Pit Passes” with coupons for Target and Hot Wheels).

Against my expectations, I really enjoyed this. It is worth watching for three reasons:
1) Robert Downey Jr. He is more or less perfect for the role displaying his cynical brand of humor leavened with some low key but effective acting (especially early on when he is imprisoned by some Taleban-esque Afghans).
2) the dialogue is clever, quick and genuinely funny in places. Downey’s lines with Gwyneth Paltrow and Jeff Bridges (both of whom handle their roles well) have the sort of zing that you don’t normally associate with a summer blockbuster.
3) the Iron Man him/itself. The usual superhero backstory is about how Bruce Wayne became Batman, or Peter Parker became Spiderman. Here the backstory is shorn of any real psychological drama. It is about mechanics and pulleys and “arc reactors” and stabilizers and such like. What we get is a strong sense of whizz-bangery (and several funny scenes of Downey testing the equipment).
Good old-fashioned entertainment. As one of my kids noted, it is rare that an audience applauds a movie like this when the final credits roll.

Anyone seen this? I came across a reference to it in a review of “coming home from war” movies, I think in The New Yorker. I had never heard of it, and now, having watched it, I’m not too surprised. It’s a pity, though, because this movie could have been so much better. The Gardens of Stone are military cemeteries, specifically Arlington National Cemetery in 1968-69 at the height of the Vietnam War. An elite army detail known as the Old Guard has the responsibility of managing the burials and ceremonials surrounding them, and is of course marked by the mounting US military losses. James Caan is the older officer who is having doubts about the war. Most of the men (and they are all men) are happy to be out of harm’s way, but one young soldier (D.B. Sweeney) desperately wants to get to Vietnam. He does. Since the movie opens with his funeral and his voice over before flashing back, the consequences are no surprise. Continue reading Gardens of Stone

It seems like forever since I watched a movie. I had Lust, Caution out from Netflix for six weeks, and even then it took me three nights to watch it. So it had to be just the right movie to ease back into the practice of watching in preparation for the summer blockbuster season. Nothing that forces me to re-live the trauma of an aging relative, or worse, sit across the aisle from some dickhead in a plastic Iron Man costume. Thank goodness for Keanu Reeves. If you can get past the utter stupidity of the plot, Street Kings delivers solid B-movie entertainment. Keanu is a gung-ho cop with the LAPD who cuts corners to catch his suspects, and is as happy blowing them away as taking them in for questioning. Forest Whitaker has lots of fun playing his superior who runs this elite, corrupt Vice unit. We even get Hugh Laurie as the witty internal affairs guy with the phony American accent he has honed on House. The corruption and betrayal become more and more intricate, but it’s best to ignore it all and concentrate on the gun fights. Lots of them. Keanu is even referred to as “the gunslinger” on a couple of occasions. But here he is in his element, the best since Speed when Dennis Hopper wisely advised him not to think too much. Occasionally Keanu begins to look pensive, as when trying to figure out the web of intrigue, but these brief moments of painful acting are soon relieved with a spray of bullets. Fun.