Author: Chris

For those of us concerned at the near total absence of sequels or big budget action films this summer, and outraged that Hollywood serves up heartwarming stories of the lesbian family and weepy excuses for comic book adaptations during a period once reserved for movies with a three-figure plus body count, along comes Stallone with The Expendables. Sure it’s stupid and incoherent, and most of the action stars are over 60, but it fits the bill handsomely. The Expendables are a group of mercenaries who, while they work for hire, seem to only take on cases in which they are on the side of the angels (the opening scene has them rescuing sailors from Somali pirates at the behest of the ship owners). We have Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lungren, Mickey Rourke and assorted refugees from the WWE and ultimate fighting.

They are given a task to remove the military regime of some fictional island by a shady-looking CIA operative played by Bruce Willis. One of the best lines comes when Arnold Schwartzenegger (and unlike Terminator Salvation, he filmed this while governor) turns down the job. Blah, blah, blah… beautiful daughter of military leader helps them then gets captured by evil ex-CIA agent Eric Roberts. So our motley band have to return to rescue the daughter and take down the regime. Cue 20 minutes of gunfire and explosions. It is interesting that while most of the gunplay in Expendables is of the usual kind — no blood, no lingering on the part of the camera, no consequences — Stallone (who is also the director) does frequently compose shots in which someone is literally sliced in half by gunfire, or a limb is severed right off. He did the same thing in the fourth Rambo movie and it introduces a new and disconcerting level of bloodiness to the action movie. This was on my mind since we are currently having an on-again, off-again family discussion about my younger son’s desire to play the video game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2” and whether said game is too violent for a thirteen-year old.

Anyway, good saves the day. Rourke has a speech halfway through the movie about how he wished he had saved a young woman in Bosnia because it would have saved a small part of his soul. We are left to believe that a small part of these men’s souls have been saved.  But we don’t care because we have seen hundreds and hundreds of anonymous dark-skinned soldiers mowed down in operatic fashion for the pervious 95 minutes, and that is what we paid the $5 to see.

Inception is Christopher Nolan’s latest film, and it rolls in on the back of overwrought trailers in which the laws of physics seem to disappear inside the dreamworld: cities crumble; the horizon bends backwards on itself; and slow motion explosions seem to pop off the screen. The story concerns a team whose usual task is to illegally extract information from subjects by inserting themselves into dreams. Each member of the team has a specific function, such as designing the dreamworld (architect), administering the appropriate sedation to the subjects (drugs), or depicting someone familiar to the dreamer in the dream (forger). Now its leader, Leonardo DiCaprio, has been persuaded by a wealthy industrialist (Ken Watanabe) to try something much more difficult: “inception” is the insertion of a new idea into the dream of a subject, rather than simply the stealing of existing information, such that the subject comes to fully believe the idea. Continue reading Inception

So I’m teaching a new course, a freshman seminar, entitled “Socialism: Real and Imagined.” In the context of economic crisis and the willingness of the right to throw about the word “socialism”, the idea is to have first year students think through the different meanings of the word, examine some concrete experiments in socialism (Mondragon, Swedish wage-earner funds…) and then imagine feasible and plausible forms of socialism, applicable to highly industrialized democratic societies (i.e. societies like ours).In the imagining section of the course, I’d like to use some utopian novels and some movies that deal with socialism. I’d welcome any suggestions for either books or movies. I’m thinking of using Bellamy’s “Looking Backwards” and Le Guin’s “Dispossessed” for novels, but others would be welcome. In the movie category, I’m less interested in the Soviet experience than how socialism has been discussed or proposed in the West.Thanks for any help.

Based on a novel by Christopher Isherwood, A Single Man follows one day — it is not a spoiler to say: the last day — in the life of George Falconer, a professor of English at UCLA (I think) in 1962. George is originally English, is gay, and the film opens with the death of Jim, his lover of sixteen years. Eight months after Jim’s death, George remains distraught, though it is now something that he has buried from the view of outsiders. Continue reading A Single Man

This looks like fun, and check out the cast.

The star of this delirious, chaotic, hilarious movie is Hit Girl (the utterly wonderful Chloe Grace Moretz), daughter of Big Daddy (Nicholas Cage, in a return to crazy-eyed form), and one of a new breed of superhero stalking the streets of New York. The trailers, and even the first 15 minutes of the movie might suggest that Kick-Ass himself (Aaron Johnson) is our hero, but he just provides the narration and the brief moments of self-reflection. The movie belongs to Hit Girl, from the slew of profanity that comes out of her eleven-year old mouth, to her proficiency with gun and knife, to her glorious impersonation of Chow Yun-Fat (Big Daddy raised her on John Woo movies). I could recount the plot, but that would be silly. Just go see it and have some fun.

Based on the first two episodes, this is worth continuing with. Timothy Olyphant plays Raylan Givens, a US Marshal who is quick to draw his gun, and for whom the parallels with the role of a marshal in the early West still seems relevant. Early in the first episode he is posted back to Harlan County, Kentucky, where he grew up, and the rest of the series appears to take place there. Givens is based on a recurrent Elmore Leonard character, and Leonard is credited as an executive producer.

Part of the pleasure of the series is seeing Olyphant reprising his role as Seth Bullock, but with far more enjoyment than he showed in Deadwood. In that show he was one of the weakest characters: all repressed fury without a hint of irony. But in Justified, Olyphant is far more relaxed, with an easy smile and a sly sense of humor. There is menace when he threatens a suspect, but it is always delivered gently.

But the real reason to watch this is the locale in which it takes place. This is rural Kentucky, and the show displays a real sympathy for the ex-coal miners and the assorted losers who populate the trailers and shacks that litter the show, even when those same people become Nazi thugs, or small time thieves. In each of the first two episodes the audience is invited to develop some empathy with those on the wrong side of the law. And there are some lovely touches that bring out the clash of worlds, for example a prison bluegrass band performing at a birthday party held at an exclusive country club.

Parallel but intersecting stories, the perspective of the street and the cops, gritty realism, the presence of actors we know from their portrayals of Clay Davis, Wee-Bey and Omar… it is not hard to figure out that Brooklyn’s Finest is trying to mine the rich territory staked out in The Wire. It fails, unsurprisingly given that the bar is pretty high, but it does so predictably and disappointingly. The movie, filmed on location in Brooklyn’s Brownsville neighborhood, follows three cops. Ethan Hawke is desperately trying to cash in on some drug raids to make a down payment on a new house for his large and expanding family (his Catholicism is referenced often). Don Cheadle is an undercover cop, who has infiltrated a drug gang (led by Wesley Snipes, in a fine performance), and feels the tug of dual loyalties. Richard Gere is a weary alcoholic, a few days from retirement, in love with a prostitute, unable to find meaning in what he does. Inevitably, these three stories converge in the final half hour. Continue reading Brooklyn’s Finest

This is not my bailiwick, and I assume you have all seen this, but I’d be interested in your reactions: The Death of Film Criticism. I’m particularly interested in how colleges and universities — the discipline — evaluates and weighs scholarship published outside of the usual refereed print formats.

I’m not sure exactly what our rules are, given that so many foreign movies appear on our shores more than a year after they are released. That said:

The Class

Il Divo

District 9

Inglorious Basterds

Two Lovers

Capitalism: A Love Story

The Girlfriend Experience

Public Enemies