tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-67571790846512881682024-02-20T06:08:56.825-05:00Mocha Movie MusingsGood movies, bad movies, radical cinema, reductive films. Analyzing all angles, considering complete contexts. KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.comBlogger21125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-26314746196025482922016-02-10T16:28:00.002-05:002023-06-02T12:50:46.030-04:00The Imitation Game (2014)As <i>The Imitation Game</i> opens, Benedict Cumberbatch, in deeply engaging form here, asks that a particular kind of attention be paid to what he is going to say to avoid missing something. Twice he asks you to pay attention. There are interlocking and singularly common qualities germane to life as an academic that are seen as peculiar by almost everyone else in life: intensity of focus to the exclusion of all else, and the lighting fast connections between the 'global' and the 'local' (to use my urban planning terminology as apt metaphor) that occur in constantly oscillating fashion within the minds of those whose job it is to think. Often when these tendencies appear in a character, they are portrayed in slightly or exaggeratedly freakish fashion, and this is one of those movies. However, it is also a film concerned with different types of attention, and to that end I am a huge fan.<br />
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Thus I fought off my two year long urge to dismiss this film as only 'Oscar bait' and satisfied my need for a break from the intensely particular talents of Benedict Cumberbach. I swear he is the acting equivalent of an intensely rich flourless chocolate cake - the first slender slice is delightful, but one needs time, days between slices or the taste loses its surprising, satisfying attraction. Anyway, I first re-watched the intriguing but extra-faulty/fake version of Turing's story, <i>Enigma</i> (2001). Yes, I own a copy of the film, it sits on a shelf with my copy of <i>Proof</i> (2005) and <i>Sphere </i>(1998) and <i>Contact</i> (1997) in a section I should just label "Films That Make Science Seem Sassy." Often overly melodramatic, <i>Enigma</i> features a Dougray Scott guilty here of scenery chewing only slightly less hammy than his villain role in Mission Impossible II (2000). <i>Enigma</i> nonetheless features Kate Winslet in a lovely turn as a code-breaker extraordinaire who had the misfortune to be born female and brilliant in the 1930s. In retrospect, this film fails to provide not only the truth of what happened at Bletchly Park involving breaking Enigma code, it also fails to provide a narrative that one can become emotionally invested in.<br />
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Not so for <i>The Imitation Game</i>. The reviews I have read seem to believe the film avoids complicating the true character of Turing in favor of narrative brevity and neatness, and this is certainly the case in most studio biopics, but seems less true here. Additionally, and most interesting for me is the usually astute Dana Stevens over at Slate whose <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2014/11/alan_turing_biopic_the_imitation_game_starring_benedict_cumberbatch_reviewed.html" target="_blank">review</a> accuses the film of neglecting to do things which it does in fact do, and of treating the audience like remedial learners when in fact I felt that it demands that one stay checked in, attention wise, or miss things. And we're back to paying attention. <br />
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What makes this film stand out to me is that it was not comfortable, as some films are, with showing what the code-breakers were doing out of context. Their work and conversations are juxtaposed with scenes of soldiers and citizens missing limbs, people packed deep under ground subject to the flickering uncertainty of tunnel lights, ships destroyed at sea, a woman scraping the bottom of a large pot for one more taste of food. Hollywood fare is the worst about beating one over the head with an idea, so it was nice that the film only featured one scene focused on the fallout from their actions while often filling the screen with images of carnage. Shortly after breaking the Enigma code, a member of the team realizes that his brother will probably die as part of an attack on a convoy of British ships full of civilians, and begs in tears for the team to chance revealing that they have broken Enigma to save his brother. This they cannot do, and the revelation of why is disclosed perhaps too quickly for some, but it becomes clear here and as the movie continues that there is a high human toll to winning the war. This is a delicate balance all films of this kind must strike between comment and display, showing and telling. Without commentary to couch stakes, perhaps some missed that the movie is aware of them.<br />
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Attention. I began this review touching upon the way mental life functions for an academic, and this is the way in which to critique what the film is doing. For example, this film does portray Turing as perhaps on the spectrum somewhere around Aspergers - are most brilliant people on the spectrum, or does mental brilliance appear similar to Aspergers? But if one were to view the events through his perspective instead of those in the film who critique him as strange, judge, slap, and abuse him, the film takes on a different resonance. Perhaps in real life Turing was far more jovial and engaging, but the film wants to make clear the isolation attendant upon seeing clearly where others do not. Early on the team is breaking for lunch one afternoon and attempts to lure him from his work, but his singular focus renders his answers to their questions stilted, brusque and ultimately silly. We are then left with the back of Turing's head and the laughter of the departing team. This is a man different from most and for whom no one has made allowances. An apt critique of the film would consider the frequency with which he is set up as the butt of a joke without any recourse to why he acts as he does.<br />
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For example, in talking to the Commander of the program, he is chastised for his brusque demeanor, demand for resources, and insistence that he knows what to do to break the code. Its as if Turing is the only person in the war effort not allowed to feel the pressures of a need to break the code and act on it quickly. It is a moment that overshadows the entirety of the film, an oddly anti-intellectual bent that tints almost everything that occurs. When the Commander tells him he is no longer in university and wars are won through chain of command, its a moment that feels out of joint. I do not doubt that such moments do occur, but even accounting for the hindsight of knowing that Turing was successful, this brush off of the ideas of what even he the Commander had declared a prodigal talent, feels odd. Doesn't he want to win the war? It is almost as if the characters within the film itself were part of who Turing was asking to pay attention in the beginning and only the always stellar Mark Strong's MI6 Menzies agent appears to be doing as asked.<br />
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Again later, in his relationship with Joan Clarke there is the need to pay attention and Joan does not. I have to admit, I have not cared for a Keira Knightly performances since <i>Love Actually</i>- the last time she seemed not to be constantly posturing, posing, and nearly imploding (her cheeks at least) with her own self importance. However, this acting behavior of hers seems right for Joan, the at once brilliant and charming but equally provincial, uninspired, and anti-empathetic sole woman of the group. After a visit from the MI6 agent Menzies, Turing approaches Joan. He is in fear for how many secrets and lies are floating around beyond his control - variables unmoored and unpredictable, a nightmare for a mathematician - and how they might cause her harm. His care for her is clear as he suggests she go back home and find another fianceé - it had only been a situation of convenience so his suggestion feels less coo-coo.<br />
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Joan's proposal is that they go ahead and get married since most married couples are not so well matched of mind and caring about each other as they are, even if he is gay. Here in a final effort to get her to go home, in almost cliché form, Turing says he does not care for her and never has. She slaps him and says everyone is right, he is a monster! While I am completely on board with her telling him that this work is the most important she will do in life and she's not leaving, this is not the first time when Joan is intensely cruel to Turing, and that feels unnecessary. Perhaps Knightly's performance is to blame and in more capable hands these exchanges would have taken on less shrill and more nuanced tones. But if you pay attention, there is no shaking the fact that Turing is attuned to a lot more than those around him suspect and is less narcissistic than focused on the task at hand.<br />
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And luckily the film does allow Turing to learn from those around him a bit more of the social nuances and behaviors that lubricate interactions. And with Joan's help in her less biting moments, he lets the team in and their collaboration is what finally completes the machine. Could the film have taken more time to describe how the machine functions and how Turing et. al. worked through the problems of adapting the Polish machine to the purposes of Britain's need to break Enigma? Sure. But as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRQlji3bCZI" target="_blank">Screen Junkies</a> made clear, too much math in a serious movie can become comedic fodder and dislodge one from the fantasy. I usually view films of this kind as the entertaining wikipedia summary version of a story where you then seek out the full book-length story later, and at the end I immediately did research to see what was Turing's contribution to mathematics and how his work was applicable to the development of computers.<br />
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Finally, I have read reviews where they complained of the film playing down his actual actions as a gay man at the time. In reality, Alan Turing openly but unsuccessfully came on to men, told his co-workers that he was gay, participated in the Bletchly Park Pride Parade, etc. However, I found it refreshing for him to be portrayed as gay without the questionably 'authentic' but needlessly flashy show. Somehow it naturalized the idea of him being 'born this way' in the way that the sexual orientation of straight folks is naturalized. There is a scene of his integrity being compromised by the Soviet spy because the threat of exposure for a gay man would mean a prison sentence, and one could critique the film for too neatly solving this problem via MI6 awareness of the spy. The threat of exposure is only allowed to hover for a few minutes before being swept away and replaced by what the film feels is his more important return to work- statistically fighting to win the war by letting many die.<br />
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Yes, his being gay is why he was persecuted, investigated, convicted, and forced to take freakin' estrogen injections (for a damned year?)! But, if as argued by some <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-18561092" target="_blank">scholars of Turing's life</a> his being gay wasn't all the doom and gloom that Hodges 1983 biography and the film portrays, and that is assumed to be the real life case and cause for his suicide - if he even did commit suicide - then this film does a fairly good job of making Turing's attraction to men just another element of the brilliant mathematician he was. Is this a film about a brilliant math professor or a man persecuted for being gay in 1950s Britain? Perhaps <i>Imitation Game</i> was never going to be successful at showing both sides and there is a film out there that is only his personal life, training for marathons and dating.<br />
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This review is not a celebration of <i>Imitation Game</i> as a perfect or great "biopic film," especially since this one is fatally flawed <a href="http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2014/12/03/the_imitation_game_fact_vs_fiction_how_true_the_new_movie_is_to_alan_turing.html" target="_blank">if you are seeking the truth</a> of Alan Turing's life. Instead this is a celebration of a somber but
keen portrayal of both the quality of life for a singularly brilliant
mathematical mind that others fail to give the benefit of the doubt because he's a bit strange, and what great injustice is made possible by his status as a gay man in times of overt prosecution. KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-20057901156282110042013-05-23T12:52:00.001-04:002013-05-23T12:52:53.581-04:00World War Z (2013) - Film ReviewThank God for brothers who are as die-hard-cinephile as their sisters, because thanks to mine, not only did I get to see <b>Brad Pitt</b> in the flesh - in Hoboken, NJ of all places! - but I got to experience an advance screening of World War Z (2013) last night, and what an experience it was! Visceral Fast, Transformative, Terrifying... This is not the Zombie films of old, but an evolution and a challenge that felt welcome and freaking Fun!<br />
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Besides my brother and I, groups of people on either side of us in the theatre had read and loved the novel World War Z by Max Brooks - an amazingly engaging, horrifying post-apocalyptic zombie yarn tucked perfectly into a searing theorization of zombies' socio-political effects. For example, what might North Korea's extreme isolation mean for their response to a zombie holocaust? What about Israel's response - how would a country accustomed to being surrounded by threats respond? For us, the film had a tough task. Films of books have both the potential to remind us why the book was amazing and let us down by failing to provide the same thrill and engagement, especially if they drift too far from their source material.<br />
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Fortunately, Brad Pitt's summer tentpole does not let fans down! World War Z is not the same as Max Brooks' novel and some of the differences are fundamental. However, rest assured fellow fans of the novel (especially if you understand/keep in mind that films have different constraints/allowances than books), because with these changes comes a welcome speed and thrill ride aspect that only benefits those expectations. If one is to differ from a film's novel origins, then this is how you do it!<br />
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For those who have not read the novel, the film will still please and become a summer film to measure others against. World War Z adds the warm human heart that made the novel stick to the visual zip and grandeur of film to breathe life (*ba-dum-tshh*) into what could have been a long-winded plod, but instead is gripping. With more Yay! than So-so. transferences, the film brings over the novel's tone without getting lost in the subtext. In other words, we have the Walking Dead TV show for our deeply meditative, slow-burn take on human response to zombies, this is a film, and should behave as such.<br />
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Beginning with the necessary establishing family moments that make clear who we are rooting for and why, the film wisely does not force us to dwell with Gerry (Brad Pitt), his wife and two daughters in their suburban Philadelphia home for long. Delivering the first jolt a few minutes in, World War Z does not let you rest easy until credits roll. Here zombies are the result of an infection, and as such the dead act as infectious agents with transmission as primary goal. This means we get a zombie populace rendered deeply creepy not simply by their vicious difference from living humans, but by their actions which resemble swarms of insect or animal life; or on a biological level, by actions similar to viral/bacterial contagion within a living host.<br />
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Moving between a U.S. Navy flotilla, America, Korea, Israel and Wales, the film's strength lies in a temporal and visual relentlessness that mimics what a real world zombie apocalypse would do to our fragile social/global stability. Yes, one must suspend disbelief as Gerry's U.N. investigator survives one catastrophe/perilous situation after another in his pursuit of a cure for the plague - including a scene on a plane that must be seen to experience the gut-punch of its effect. But the spectacle encourages a welcome suspension of disbelief if my own and the audience's enthused audible responses and applause at the end can be counted.<br />
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One of the only things noted by my brother - who said this film easily rivals 28 Days Later - as a surprise is that there was precious little blood for a zombie flick. Yes, World War Z establishes a distinct difference from past zombie fare in both the infection's intent inside of hosts and a difference in transmission-to-zombie time. However, for horror fans weaned on diets of Romero's, Boyle's and other director's bloody good, good and bloody zombie romps, one cannot but feel a slight sense of, well, of being cheated. If an arm is lopped off or a crowbar is embedded in a human skull or any of the body's major veins or arteries is punctured, There Will Be Blood! Yet World War Z is a strangely anemic affair, as if the shipment of red food coloring and corn-syrup intended for filming got sent to Istanbul instead of Israel and they decided to excise it completely as a production element!<br />
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In all fairness, the film's omission of blood works narratively to build suspense and tension in more than one instance, and in those cases Marc Forster's decisions have a clear and lovely dramatic heft that sets the film apart from zombie movies less concerned with story and craft than with dumping on fake blood to mask their flaws. But for those horror movie and zombie fans like my brother and myself, it may be a surprise to witness everyone, especially Gerry's U.N. dude, running around with such clean clothes.<br />
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I don't want to disclose much more since it is ages until the film actually comes out and I hate spoilers as much if not more than the next person, but suffice it to say thrilling, terrifying and fun are the key words I think of, and that is exactly what you want from a summer zombie popcorn flick.<br />
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Questions?<br />
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KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-68601419294321697862013-02-25T18:01:00.003-05:002023-06-02T12:30:34.814-04:00Melancholia (2011)<br />
Was I the only one who saw this film and thought that, not only is the entire debacle a hallucination brought on by the condition after which the film is named, but additionally, the hallucinatory and delusional state had caused Justine (Kirsten Dunst in the first role I have liked her in since she got to make out with Brad Pitt in <i>Interview With The Vampire</i>!) to kill off many members of her own family?? How could everyone else have missed this? Must have been so caught up in the film's visual beauty that they missed the dismal and depressing fact that the film is at base a recounting of a melancholic incident in the life of a bi-polar woman. Even if we put aside the idea of Justine having killed off many of her own family members, as a hallucination, the film holds up pretty well when one considers Justine is the first to see the approaching planet that will end all life on earth.<br />
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There is little of plot to recount: its the end of the world as we know it, and no one feels good about anything! The film opens with a couple in their wedding day limousine, unable to navigate the twisty road from ceremony to reception - in a visual metaphor one finds it impossible to miss! Consequently, they leave the limo and proceed on foot to a lavish reception where the family drama unleashed on unsuspecting guests strikes the bride so forcefully that she falls into the depressive phase of her frequent manic to depressive swings. Her response to the stresses of a toxic mother is understandable for a bi-polar sufferer, she is self-destructive. She has sex outside on the golf course, with her dress still on, with some lackey brought to the wedding by her boss. And I suppose this indiscretion is supposed to make clear or acceptable why her family respond to her with such hostility??<br />
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For example, as a Lars Von Trier film, the other people's responses are freakishly enacted, but the most bizarre is her new spouse (played with a shocking degree of muted banality by Alexander Skarsgarde, best known as the passionate fire/ice vampire on True Blood). This paragon of determination and commitment, frustrated that Justine will not have sex with him immediately after the reception and passive-aggressively angry that she does not display enough excitement over his purchase of apple orchards to make her happy, packs up his things and <i>Leaves Her</i>!! Yes, while still in wedding attire, he leaves her - so, 'until death do us part' really meant, 'until I get mildly annoyed by your long-battled bout with mental illness.'<br />
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His departure, her father's refusal to recognize and attempt to alleviate the stress she feels when she begs him to stay and speak with her, and being fired from her job precipitate an ambiguous amount of time before we meet up with Justine again, and this is why the film's hallucinatory effect feels most keen. Not only is Justine the first to see the planet's appearance in the sky - how meaningful that a wedding day is connected to the end of all life by a giant blue planet! - but the planet's approach follows her descent/depression.<br />
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If depression feels as if doom and disaster lie just around every corner and nothing is going to turn out well, then what better way to show that then by having a planet headed straight for the earth. Suddenly, Justine perks up! With the approach of the apocalypse she is revived and alert, whereas when we see her again post wedding, she has to be helped to stand up as her sister attempts to have her take a bath. It is either the most cynical or the most perverse wish-fulfillment that this film celebrates - at least with lovely visuals - the realization of the depressive mindset that the end is in fact nigh.<br />
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Thus, as a hallucination it works very well. If the train-wreck wedding took place, then it would make sense that Justine's mind would create a way out of the pain through the destruction of everyone. After the wedding she doesn't stew in her apartment and then show up at her sister's house. In reality, she lapses into an irretrievable depression that appears to her like the end of the world.<br />
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Ultimately I found it hard to find the spark in this film that had everyone so excited about it when it came out. If you either mute the film after the first beautiful ten minutes or so, or continue playing music over the muted film, then perhaps I see why people were so pleased. Otherwise, it feels far too dark a vision, too stark an end for either the clinically depressed or bi-polar person. I don't necessarily need redemption and Hollywood endings, but I also do not need total annihilation.<br />
KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-7987205549970265012013-02-14T01:56:00.003-05:002013-02-14T01:56:44.365-05:00Nurse Betty (2000)The plot reads like any of a possible many cheesy and hackneyed neo-noir flicks: two hit men (Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock), one on his final job, follow the sole witness and wife (Renee Zellweger) of the man (Aaron Eckhart as a character you can hate completely) they just killed over drug deal gone bad. The wife flees cross country from Kansas to California with the drugs/drug money in the trunk of her car, and creates a new life for herself. However, this summary fails to consider the wondrous, unusual, and utterly candid film that Neil LaBute has made. Wildly beyond any attempts to categorize it, the film flaunts the tenets of all the genres in which it dips: crime drama, film noir, buddy comedy, road flick, etc... and in the course of its execution, it creates a stirring and deeply compelling group of characters.<br />
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And that is perhaps the best description of this film, a character study. The two hit men are played by Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock as a counter to the bumbling antics of previous cinematic buddy duos. As the hit man in training, Rock is uncouth and acts as the uncut, glassy-rock looking lump to Freeman's polished, gleaming engagement ring. His comedic schtick should be odd or at least off putting, but instead balanced with the malice of their actions, it acts as demonstration of one of LaBute's main fascinations: how evil and morally corrupt motivations can hide in even the most beguiling and banal seeming packages. Not to say that Rock's performance is banal, instead it crackles and clicks with Freeman's in marvelous fashion. LaBute represented the same slant of human nature in the criminally underrated, and <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/movies/2003/05/boy_hates_girl.html" target="_blank">unfairly/viciously maligned</a> <i>The Shape of Things </i>(2003).<br />
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This banal quality of evil is carried over into Freeman's performance, and is beautifully contrasted with Zellweger's. And as Ebert highlights so wonderfully in his review, it is the complementary trajectory of Freeman and Zellweger's characters that makes the film work so well. Zellweger's Betty is launched involuntarily into fantasy by violence, Freeman's hitman is launched into fantasy voluntarily by his life of violence. But there is more to what the film is doing than just the two of them joined in dreamy fantasy. Freeman's aging, evil, but compellingly disassociated hit man is believable paired with Rock's comedic impatience, but it feels more interesting still when considered as contrast to Betty.<br />
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As a character study this film is concerned with more than fantasy. It is playing with our ideas about evil and people's responses to evil when it is thrown into the lives of those who do not regularly encounter it. What happens when one confronts the limits of one's own ability to tolerate horror? What does fantasy do for those confronting the unimaginable? There are all sorts of ideas in our social and legal world about "appropriate" responses to certain situations, and psychology will tell you what people should do given a particular stimuli. However, what LaBute does so well in this film is show how the unpredictability of existence is actually more the norm than what legal and psychological parlance tells us. What do we hear more about, the bizarre "you could not make this up" type of crimes, or the horrific crimes that unfold exactly as we are told by Law & Order they should?<br />
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And it is this contrast, between fantasy and violence, between death and the sublime, as filtered through the magnificent, nuanced performances of the characters. It is these shifting, precarious roles that make this the sort of film that, every time I see it, I find myself again surprised by how quickly and tightly it pulls me in, while simultaneously repelling me from the violence of the two hit men and the resort to madness taken by our heroine. If given the time and consideration, this is the type of film to teach you more about yourself than you realize based on your responses to what you see the character's seeing, and what you sense the characters feeling.<br />
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<br />KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-86934765860038949622013-02-14T01:48:00.000-05:002013-02-14T01:48:02.003-05:00Battleship (2012)As a Black woman in America, overeducated in the ways that visual culture functions and malfunctions in its representation of folks at the margins of social constructivist power, I often find myself at odds with movies and TV that are <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116126/quotes?qt=qt0182866" target="_blank">hostile to me</a> and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vyq61qQF9ik" target="_blank">full of stereotypes</a>. In an extra cruel twist of fate, I am also the atypical "chick" in that I love me some college football (and the Steelers, for reasons of marriage), college basketball (and the Knicks/Celtics for reasons of Anthony and Rondo respectively), and action movies full of explosions and fights and strong staple characters of American cinema. I am probably the only woman who was ecstatic that her husband bought her the boxed set of Bruce Willis' Die Hard films - yippy kay yay!<br />
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All this means that I love my summer-blow 'em up-blockbusters as much as Cary Fukunaga's stunning update to<i> </i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1229822/" target="_blank"><i>Jane Eyre</i> (2011)</a> and the equally challenging and beautiful work of Julie Dash's<i> </i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104057/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1" target="_blank"><i>Daughters of the Dust</i> (1991)</a>. However, my Summer Blockbusters do not always love me, and the <i>Transformers</i> flicks are a key example. This is not a review of those films, but in summary, whenever I happen upon Michael Bay's frenzied creepy robots, I am left feeling not just alienated but assaulted. See, when I see a movie, you don't always have to absolutely be speaking to a diverse audience and trying to make sure I'm excited to see it, but please don't slap me around while I'm paying you approximately $16-$20 and have to sit in seats with gum on the bottom and sticky soda on the armrests!!<br />
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As brief summary, the first and especially the second <i>Transformers</i> films not only take a huge dump on people of other races and ethnicities - see character's talking about John Tuturo's "jew 'fro," the whiny, cowardly hispanic roommate, and comments made by<a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/06/24/movies/24transform.html?_r=0" target="_blank"> Dargis at the NYTimes</a> - they also hate women. Women get the shaft via the main character's mom portrayed as whiny, bothersome, and silly/stupid in disturbing ways, and <a href="http://herocomplex.latimes.com/uncategorized/megan-foxs-absence-changed-transformers-vibe-says-shia-labeouf/#/0" target="_blank">Megan Fox's exposed skin</a> and <a href="http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20284375,00.html" target="_blank">comments</a> to the press about Bay's objectification of her body. And none of this mentions the fact that Bay introduces two robot/car characters in the second film that have voices with obvious African American cadence and tone, they are bumbling fools, like a modern day minstrel show, and at one particularly low point for the entire history of cinema, they admit that they cannot help the humans with some technology related to their home-world because<a href="http://movieline.com/2009/06/18/the-movieline-nine-most-shameless-aspects-of-transformers-revenge-of-the-fallen/" target="_blank"> <b>They Cannot Read</b></a>! This is not to suggest that overt pandering is an expected or desired guiding impulse, but at least an effort Not to make a movie with hundreds of entries listed at TVTropes.org is definitely welcome.<br />
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I include this lengthy introduction and comment because of my very low expectations going into seeing <i>Battleship</i> (2012), and because of so many <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/battleship-taylor-kitsch-rihanna-reviews-326686" target="_blank">reviewers</a> insistance on comparing the two films and two directors in a way I find both unfair and without reflection on the ways in which they differ. Even the review over at <a href="http://moria.co.nz/sciencefiction/battleship-2012.htm" target="_blank">Moira</a>, where I often refer to check out his thoughts on Sci-Fi flicks, gets it wrong because, unlike <i>Transformers 2</i> (2009), Berg's film did not leave me feeling dirty and pissed off about hours in my life I will never have back again. This is because Peter Berg's <i>Battleship</i>, rather than being a shoddy imitation of <i>Transformers</i> or <i>Transformers</i> on water, is instead what <i>Transformers</i> should have been had Michael Bay not been the dreadful filmmaker that <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DCa4DwpWAk" target="_blank">Trey Stone and Matt Parker</a> take so much delight in skewering! Berg's film makes an effort to be inclusive and appealing to a broad range of people without dulling the action and cheesy fun.<br />
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The film bears little resemblance to the board game, and instead features your standard, obligatory, and typical summer movie characters and plot of aliens fighting a rag tag group of underdog humans who somehow triumph over their superior technological and strength capacities to save planet Earth. Set in Hawaii, the beautiful location no doubt at least offers many viewers a surrogate-vacation, albeit one full of angry aliens and people dying after being run over by <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8dK0b24UFA" target="_blank">giant sentient bocce balls</a>. There are the standard scenes of guy/girl-meet-cute, alien/human-meet-scary, the death of characters to give other characters perspective, comic relief characters, and people running around stating what they are doing and projecting their ideas onto the audience so we know what we are supposed to think and feel at all times.<br />
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I haven't included a true plot summary because it's not really necessary. I am Not arguing that Battleship is a fabulous film or even a staple of anyone's DVD collection. It is a goofy, fun movie full of plot holes, missing motivations, and stupid actions. (For example, why isn't the first action taken by those left inside the impenetrable bubble to destroy the thing creating the bubble?!!! Aim Only for the giant bubble creating platforms people!!) However, <i>Battleship</i> presents us with differences from Bay's dreck that are worth noting. As noted by <a href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120516/REVIEWS/120519990" target="_blank">Ebert</a>, in one of the more balanced reviews of the film, the co-captain of humanity's salvation is Japanese due to plot contrivance and probable market-research about capturing Asian markets. But this casting of one of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0038355/" target="_blank">Thor's right hand</a> men also allows for a dissolution of lingering nasty feelings about Pearl Harbor associated with the Japanese attack. Instead of fighting each other, here Japan and America redirect the hostilities into fighting the aliens.<br />
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Additionally, our hero Lt. Hooper's main ally in charging out to fight the aliens is none other than petty officer Raikes, played by Rihanna. The government may have only recently decided to <a href="http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2013/01/23/military-to-open-combat-jobs-to-women/" target="_blank">allow women to fight in combat positions</a>, but in Berg's world, no one is better able to assist our main man than Barbadian pop songstress (and <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2232923/Rihannas-battered-face-featured-Chris-Brown-concert-posters-singer-targeted-anti-domestic-violence-campaign.html" target="_blank">bum</a>--<a href="http://buzzworthy.mtv.com/2013/02/10/rihanna-chris-brown-cuddle-grammy/" target="_blank">magnet</a>) Rihanna. She is on the gun in the boat with Hooper sent out to first meet the alien vessel, and seems to be the only one other than his brother able to rag on Hooper while on duty. When a soldier is injured, Hooper sends two men to take him to the infirmary, and keeps Raikes with him to continue searching the ship for alien invaders. Whether or not her prominence and casting was a callous choice aimed at pulling in young viewers who are already into her music, the choice of placing a Black woman so prominently in battling the alien forces warmed the cockles of my heart. As did the overall multi-colored array of characters on the ship including native Hawaiians.<br />
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Now, Raikes is not perfect. Occupying a pseudo-butch role that admittedly leaves no room for understanding her 1) as often the sole woman amongst men on a U.S. navel vessel and 2) apparently the only woman good enough to join the men in the U.S. versus Japan soccer match that is part of the naval camp meeting activities, the character of Raikes nonetheless fires the key shot to wipe out the aliens before they can 'phone home.' And more than once Raikes channels Uhuru in her ability to operate the ships controls when the men cannot - for the geeky viewers among us. More should be said of Rihanna's performance, existing as it does in an often asexual and angry-black-woman zone I am inclined to be frustrated with the limits of, and I might say more in another post, but for now let us say that the filmmakers could have chosen to put someone like Hooper's love interest Sam in this role and instead they chose someone completely different than what Bay's choice would have been and that makes me happy!<br />
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Berg also differs from Bay when it comes to said love interest. Played by Sports Illustrated model Brooklyn Decker, this role does not offer her much too do, and yet what it <i>does</i> offer her does not require she be a virtually naked, whiny niny waiting to be saved or run next to the hero as arm candy. Unlike in Bay's claptrap, Decker's Sam is not filmed with her back arched and butt cheeks pushed toward the camera in titillating sex-object fashion. Sam first appears in a belly barring shirt, but hey, this is Hawaii after all and everyone is sweating and hot. Later, working with a <a href="http://www.woundedwarriorproject.org/" target="_blank">Wounded Warrior</a> as his physical therapist, she is clothed, professional, and obviously aware of being pretty but that is secondary to being active in helping the veteran get stronger while eluding/foiling alien aims. She does not whine about needing to be saved, and does not dither more than a second or two when on the line briefly with fiancee Hooper about blowing up an antenna. She does not even mention the personal and romantic connection between the two when discussing his assistance with the veteran and the scientist, and when on the phone with him it is he who calls her "baby" before they are disconnected. Moreover, and most exciting, is a key scene towards the end where, when they need a good driver to take out the alien antenna, it is Sam who is enlisted to drive the jeep over deep ruts and flying off inclines. This felt especially keen for me, a freakin' phenomenal driver who was razzed by a man last week about the fact that a man should be driving me around. Sigh.<br />
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Finally, unlike the Bay films that create worlds without much nuance and without any ideas other than his own allegedly <a href="http://herocomplex.latimes.com/uncategorized/megan-foxs-absence-changed-transformers-vibe-says-shia-labeouf/#/0" target="_blank">16year old boy's perspective</a>, this film actively includes veterans (although in some scenes there were actors mixed in as well) and Wounded Warriors. As a film involving the navy, one might expect the nod to the old guard - even <i>Under Siege</i> (1996), amongst the topless woman and witty one-liners, snuck in a third act nod that Berg repeats in Battleship. However, the difference here is one of ability. The key man of the group whose job is to delay the transmission of the alien's request for help from home, is real life Iraq war vet Colonel Gregory D. Gadson who lost his legs below the knee. In the film, he navigates steep hills and battles with aliens in Iron Man suits, all while standing on/wearing prosthetic legs! Ragging on Sam that his grandmother or his dog could climb a hill they're ascending - his dog happens to be dead - Colonel Gadson brings a welcome gravity and depth to a role that could have been a throwaway. Combined with an early montage of veterans with prosthetic limbs, Berg has gone out of his way to highlight the payments made in flesh and blood by real life vets while celebrating the fictional glory of Navy-men battling aliens.<br />
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This review may perhaps be the most computer "ink" spilled in analyzing a film that most critics and viewers despised, but it is necessary. <i>Transformers</i> 1, 2... movies have done a world of harm to many of the people Bay would like to entice to see them (even as <i>Transformers</i>' creators give us a prime example of <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/celebritology/post/megan-fox-got-fired-from-transformers-because-of-steven-spielberg/2011/06/20/AG7d96cH_blog.html" target="_blank">the pot calling the kettle black by firing Megan Fox</a> over the least damaging and most insipid of her statements about the film making process). And people they want to see their movies include those like me who adore all forms of film, will pay for the big screen and communally charged environment that a theatre creates, and if I enjoy it, I will encourage others to go see a movie. Peter Berg was clearly inspired by Hasbro's Transformers films, but whether it was working on Friday Night Lights or appearing in <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110308/?ref_=sr_1" target="_blank">The Last Seduction (1994)</a></i> or one of the other projects he has worked on in between, with <i>Battleship</i>, Berg as done something better and different than Bay.<br />
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I did not pay to see <i>Battleship</i> in theaters, but I did pay to see both <i>Transformers</i> 1 & 2. I even stayed all the way through the second film - although a friend said she, her husband, and her 10 year old nephew left after about an hour because of how deeply offensive it was. But if I could go back in time, I would gladly pay the cost of both of those films to see <i>Battleship</i> instead.KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-2241156733093446072012-11-14T04:45:00.001-05:002023-06-02T12:25:00.860-04:00The Crazies (2010)A pitchfork dripping blood, being dragged across linoleum floors while one of our film's stars lies struggling, strapped to a hospital bed, automatically sends shivers down one's spine. But the true creepy effects arise through a fusing of the visual scare elements and the subliminal suggested revisions to the original flick.<br />
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I've seen this movie twice and then one partial time by now and each time I'm struck by how disturbing and isolating the film feels. But I knew I needed to review it when first the <a href="http://www.chron.com/entertainment/movies/article/The-Crazies-1706340.php" target="_blank">Houston Chronicle</a> and then even <a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124005604" target="_blank">NPR</a> offered reviews that felt to be missing something key to why the film is an effective post-modern horror flick.<br />
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The basic premise remains from the 1973 George Romero original: a small town's people begin losing their minds due to the government's whoopsy! of dispersing a chemical via accidental plane crash that incites horrible violent tendencies in folks. Now, I must admit I have not seen the original, but that feels unnecessary given the claims as to why this remake is not as good as the original. But first, the breakdown.<br />
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In this version the local sheriff David (Timothy Olyphant in a convincingly understated performance) and his wife Judy, the local doctor (Radha Mitchell, less memorable here than her determined mother in <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApsKF5cnSZ8" target="_blank">Silent Hill</a> and not quite believable as the town doctor), are challenged to respond when people of the town begin engaging in seriously evil behavior. A father burns down his house with his wife and child locked inside. Then when put in jail, he begins to alter physically so that I would have refused to occupy the same building, let alone try to touch him when he appears to have died, as the loyal deputy (Joe Anderson) does, nearly losing his arm.<br />
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In this and other scenes Anderson seems to have slipped on set from another movie, such is the nuanced quality of his performance. Since the government's <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/500329" target="_blank">rhabdoviridae</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictional_toxins" target="_blank">prototype</a> virus appears to exacerbate existing elements of violence within each afflicted subject's character, and the onset of tendencies can be subtle, its exciting that we are given so much screen time with Anderson's deputy as a possible infected subject. What this means is that, if one is not cynical about the probability of the deputy being infected, you are given a wonderfully creepy and insidious performance of a normally controlled and honorable man teetering on the brink. Could you ditch your best friend and longtime partner if you suspected him of becoming ill and therefore violent? When would you know it was too late? Can one hold onto oneself despite chemical interference? It may help highlight his performance that no one else is given this arc, so he can establish its parameters, but he does so to such wonderful effect, you don't really need anyone else. <br />
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But enough about the sole great performance! As expected things spiral out of control, people become more and more violent, who is and who isn't infected by the plane's chemicals is anyone's guess, and our named protagonists are on the run for their lives. The government comes in, makes a mess of things, and...<br />
<br /><br />Aaaarrrgggh! WARNING, there be SPOILERS BELOW!<br />
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...then decides the best move is to use a device that appears thermobaric, or nuclear - but couldn't really be unless the government wanted to then justify Hiroshima style fatalities and cancer rates in nearby towns/cities - to wipe the "problem" off the face of the earth.<br />
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The aforementioned reviewers' problems with the film seem to be due to its deviation from Romero's hallowed original - which apparently had a lot to say about the 1970's moment. For example, NPR says:<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
"<i>Romero was particularly adept in this regard, and his 1973 small-town epidemic thriller, <i>The Crazies,</i>
touched on biological warfare, the bureaucratic ineptitude of
government in crisis situations, and the breakdown of social rules in a
widespread panic. ...instead of putting us in the middle of the authorities'
disaster-management effort — a potential gold mine of material for
post-Sept. 11 and post-Katrina America — Eisner hands us a faceless,
two-dimensional occupying force. And rather than attempting to get
inside the mentality of a town put on lockdown, he assumes a few mobs
breaking through fences will suffice.</i>"</div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
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The first problem with this assessment of the newer film is that it is assuming that context is ahistorical. In the 70's moment of uncovering government corruption and having recently weaned off of daily doses of Viet Nam's graphic horror, Romero's approach seems well warranted. Of course he would take us through these steps of seeing government ineptitude and inside the minds of local townsfolk. However, our 2000s moment is different. In the post-Katrina world we know the government will not be coming to rescue you - instead the government will wait weeks to get water to the Superdome and tell you nothing!<br />
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Additionally, we are living in the media-infused post-Rwanda world of neighbors hacking their neighbors to death for no good reason, or at least not one that anyone who accesses the audio files or witness testimony online can understand. And if you ask the <a href="http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/doomsday-preppers/" target="_blank">doomsday preppers</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Monsters_Are_Due_on_Maple_Street" target="_blank"><i>The Monsters</i> Arrived <i>on Maple Street</i></a> a long, long time ago, so everyone's the enemy! The age of profound confusion that the neighbor down the street was actually a <a href="http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/criminal_mind/sexual_assault/john_jamelske/1_index.html" target="_blank">psycho</a> and you never suspected - "He was such a nice, quite man!" - has passed.<br />
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In our current moment, we don't need the 70's model of movie panic with well clarified motives. We know that motives are often insufficient or absent altogether, and wouldn't help you reconcile yourself to the events you witnessed if you had them blinking in neon ten feet high. This feeling comes through in the film's attention to moments when a character's lack of control is at once expected but still alarmingly unpredictable. For example, the character's reasons could be as simple as poor Deputy Russell who's mental slippage is so perceptible as to even be frightening to him! "I'm not right, am I?", he asks of the Sheriff, and we sympathize with him not only because he is one of the main characters, but because in this day and age, one frequently feels "I must be Crazy because I do not understand the world!"<br />
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Instead of believing we can see and know all the stages of government discussion and neighborly impulses, we feel isolated from the government's processes (yay, Patriot Act!) that make everyone a villain or criminal - just ask the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA4o6AI_LA0" target="_blank">TSA</a>! - but do not make clear why. And the 2010 film does a good job of steeping the viewer in that feeling of confusion, unease, isolation, disruption, and ultimate (but not constant) hopelessness. For example, there is a scene when David and Judy are stopping by their house to get supplies before getting out of town, and Judy begins taking her towels off the line in the yard. As David stops her, she declares despondently, "This is our home. This is where we were going to raise our children." Later, when trying to soothe her that its going to be ok, Judy snaps, shouting at him, "It is not going to be Ok, nothing is going to be Ok!!"(Slight paraphrasing here) The effect of those lines is to connect with the Current general societal feeling of disruption beyond one's control or comprehension. The post-modern moment is one of perpetual dislocation and honey, this film taps into that big time!<br />
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Secondly, the reviewers ignore what the film IS doing for our current moment and time, accusing it of having nothing to say (I'm softening the possible ferocity of my attack of the Houston reviewer who actually says Romero had a lot to critique but that Eisner had <i>nothing</i> on his mind when making the movie - ouch!). In a scene where a fellow towns person advises the sheriff to get out of town because, "Its not worth the hassle.", the Sheriff admonishes him, "By hassle are you referring to Judy, <i>my wife</i> is not worth the hassle? I'm going back into town and leave you to think about why I can't leave my wife and you <i>can</i> leave yours." (slight paraphrasing) In this thrown off scene, instead of script-writing attempting a cheap/cheesy joke, we are given a peek into the return of the Me-Decade in our reality TV land where one can openly complain about your spouse, go to therapy with your spouse, or swap them out with another one for the home TV viewing population's entertainment! In this moment it is ok to declare your wife a disposable commodity you would prefer not to retrieve.<br />
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Additionally, in the scene of a government van observing towns-folk after contamination, we are not seeing a film that assumes the government forgot about the plane crash. The film gives us multiple shots of the town and individual people from the perspective of a spy plane or spy satellite with often unintelligible government chatter over the image - the decisions that affect people but which they are not privy to the discussion of. In Eisner's use of perspective and observation of effects by government, we are seeing the history of government experimentation on its citizenry. We are also seeing the calculated nature of bureaucratic decision making by government, where "the few" can be sacrificed for "the many" - at least as perceived by filmmakers in their movies: The Rock (1996), Under Siege (1992), Outbreak (1995), etc.... It is then easy to believe the government would write off the town altogether and move on to the next possibly affected locale.<br />
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All of this is to say that a film must be considered in its own context, and considering the popular cultural field as well. If you do, then this film has a lot more going on. I am not saying its brilliant or perfect in any way - I wanted to strangle both Judy and David when they inexplicably decided to split up right near the end - the only reason being so they would each have to evade/fight crazies alone!! However, a less fetishized take on the original and a careful attention paid to the newer one, brings a whole lot more nuance to light.KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-49961209879867776062012-07-28T23:40:00.001-04:002023-05-23T14:32:45.685-04:00The Descent (2005)This movie was highly educational for me: I learned that in order for a film to be truly terrifying, I must identify with at least some of the behaviors/actions of the characters. With these requirements in mind, The Descent was not a scary film at all. <br /><br />Why spelunking appeals to so many people is as deep a mystery to me as why mosquitos or flying cockroaches exist. And if someone says "well there is a thrill to it," I say: If I want to feel the thrill of taking my life in my hands and exploring my boundaries, I can wear an oversized coat, large fake gold earrings, and a giant handbag to Macy's on 34th street! But I digress. Suffice to say, I cannot be terrified of encountering creatures I would never meet since I'm not going to jump in a random hole out in the woods.<br /><br />However, mild Claustrophobia does figure into my psychic landscape, and <a href="http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/gynephobia">Gynephobia</a> exists in men I have encountered, and to those ends the film <i>is</i> deeply terrifying! <div><br /><b>The Plot</b>: A group of "friends" go out for a day of "bonding" while diving deep into an allegorical Vagina in the woods. Upon wriggling through the extremely narrow Birth Canal into the cavern's Womb, they find they cannot go back due to a vaginal-mesh, I mean, due to a cave-in. Upon going forward seeking egress through branching "fallopian tubes", they encounter giant allegorical Semen that pick them off and consume the women one by one - so with full bellies, the Semen can stay alive and reproduce more little ectopic pregnancy monster Semen.</div><div><br />There's even a giant bloody pool that one chick must hide in temporarily from the semen. My first thought was, thank god she's on the rag or she too might have little monster babies! And once she rises from the depths of this <a href="http://www.shopdiva.com" target="_blank">Diva Cup</a>, I mean, the pool of blood, all red and slimy, we know she's a bad ass and not to be messed with! This chick is bloody angry.<br /><br /><b>Less Allegorically</b>: Upon descending into a cavern on a spelunking trip, a group of female friends cause a cave-in and cannot exit the way they entered. Pushing onward, they discover a race of carnivorous, melanin-challenged humanoids living deep in the earth who are blind, but have heightened smell and hearing, which helps them track down and kill the women one by one.<br /><br /><br />ARRGHH, WARNING: There be Spoilers Ahead!!<br /><br />The film's adventure is a trip of redemption for Sarah (Shauna McDonald) whose child has recently died, but it also features the usual cast of female characters: the ambitious, type-A leader Juno (Natalie Mendoza), who's aggressive nature feels at once queen-B catty, needy, and dismissive; the granola girl, the peace-maker, etc, etc. The important thing to note is that driven leader Juno has also had an affair with the husband of clearly telegraphed "<a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FinalGirl">Final Girl</a>" Sarah! No one really discusses the affair outright, in the way that women passive-agressively remain "friends" after doing truly horrid things to each other, but it becomes a key issue towards the end of the movie in what I DID find a really scary scene.<br /><br />Once the others have all gone the way of tv dinners, and of course our Final Girl is still around, the only other lingering survivor is Juno. Juno is physically fit, athletic, resourceful, quick on her feet, and capable at defense. When these two find each other and are in the midst of successfully battling the monsters, Sarah suddenly takes one of those climbing/spelunking curved axe-type things and plunges it into the back of Juno's calf muscle! This move of course cripples her, and leaves her as food for the nasty, toothy critters, while Sarah seems to escape. Yes, sleeping with someone's husband is a terrible thing to do, but a crime punishable by <i>Death</i>?! <i>Really</i>?!!<br /><br />I found this the most scary not because it seemed impossible for a woman to do this, but because it seems very possible! I also found this most scary not because I have ever slept with a friend's husband (or ever could/would), and not because I believe what Juno did was not terrible, but because of the comments the film seems to be making about women's friendships, behaviors, attitudes, and predispositions in general. Women are so vicious, illogical, and emotionally unstable that they would doom their own lives by taking out another compadre in the fight against vicious, carnivorous beasts deep in a cave in the earth?? Ok. So this is why I have so few really close female friends!<br /><br />If one were to psychologically, allegorically consider the film, then we have moved from female sexuality being merely <a href="http://cinemachild.blogspot.com/2011/06/jennifers-body-misunderstood-brilliance.html">scary on its own</a>, over to any sort of strong female, or female bonding, or female attempt to venture beyond the domestic sphere as being so terrifying it is something to avoid at all costs.<br /><br />Now, of course I know that the basis of horror is often facing evil in unexpected places, whether the cabin in the woods, the ship at sea, the foreign country, etc. However, for a group of women to delve into a giant "womb" and upon "gestation," each find certain death due to either their inability or unwillingness to help each other survive, well that feels unnecessary. And running through tunnels in the earth from slimy, white men who seek to rip you open and consume you is as close to a cautionary tale against pregnancy if I ever saw one.<br /><br />And these points don't even touch on the fact that Juno, the husband stealing uber-Bitch of the group, is played by attractive, ethnically, racially mysterious, but obviously Other/Of Color actress Mendoza! All the other chicks are Caucasian. Sigh.<br /><br />That said, I know there are plenty of folks who did find this film great and terrifying on the merits of the basic story and the portrayal of claustrophobic monster-battle alone. All I know is that after Sarah's idiotic, homicidal act against Juno, I was very happy to be watching the <a href="http://movie-censorship.com/report.php?ID=4732">British version</a> (or "unrated" version) the first time I saw this film!<br /><br />Genre: A-<br />Epidermal/Ethnic Variance: C- (always the hot, horny minority chick taking white girl's men)<br />Visuals/Audio: B<br />Gender Rep: A- (its an all female review, sole dude mentioned cheated on wife with her best friend)<br />Narrative: C+<br /><br />Overall Gut: B- / C</div>KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-53160321151308911022012-07-28T22:11:00.001-04:002012-07-28T22:11:54.548-04:00The Midnight Meat Train (2008)<span style="color: #eeeeee;">Warning: This is not the film for you if the thought of an eyeball's CGI trajectory from socket toward camera is beyond the tolerance level for your stomach to handle. However, if you can tolerate this and other rather gory images, and get beyond them to see the (dare I say it?) beautifully textured visual landscape director Ryûhei Kitamura has created, then you are in for a real treat.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #eeeeee;">The film's deeply disturbing, horrifying premise is a somewhat typical descent into an atypical hell for the unwary White male who lets his curiosity and desire for fame carry him away. Vegan photographer Leon (the ever intense, engaging, and slightly menacing Bradley Cooper) is set on capturing more gritty images of the city in order to gain a coveted showing in the elite gallery of Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields), herself a slightly creepy chick. To this end, he spends more late-night hours hanging out in the film's anonymous mega-metropolis subway system than anyone would find smart. This angers and causes problems in his relationship with Maya (an effective Leslie Bibb) who is oddly and annoyingly unwilling to believe anything he says, even when it involves ongoing serial killing. </span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;">On one photographic evening foray, he witnesses and photographs a man (Vinnie Jones) who we learn is a maniac of particular viciousness and brutality, who turns the train's passengers/victims into cleanly shorn swinging buffets for some unknown reason. One can imagine the negatives of following and photographing a serial killer.<span style="background-color: white;"> </span></span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;">Ultimately if the film suffers from anything its too little attention. The color palate and photographic angles alone merit at least one viewing. Stark, hospital grade stainless steel subway seats and simple opening and closing doors mark a descent into evil and act as a cautionary tale for those unobservant on their late night commute. No one will win any oscars for acting, but set design alone deserves a nod, forget about the filming of a fight scene where the camera goes in and out of the subway car as it rockets along, giving the viewer impossible to see but thrilling perspective.</span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;">Other reviewers have claimed the final third of the film, where the reasons for both the murders and Leon's behavior feel ridiculous, but no more so than any other horror film. I felt that Leon's behavior suddenly felt less nutty by the end, and the horror of why the killer was butchering people felt better than other serial killer's reasons. As a city dweller, and frequent late-night party girl, I was frequently frightened by the notion of being killed on the way home, and yet challenged to consider the fact that the system too often doesn't believe the most extreme stories until too late.</span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;">Genre: A truly terrifying</span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;">Epidermal/Ethnic Variance: D albeit with a quite small cast, so....</span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;">Visuals/Audio: B+</span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;">Gender Rep: B+</span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;">Narrative: C</span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="color: #eeeeee;">Overall Gut: B-</span><br />
<br />KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-44578683213540195762012-06-27T23:20:00.004-04:002023-06-02T10:31:16.478-04:00The Grey (2011)For what turned out to be a trip deep, deep into the heart of existential malaise and hopelessly dangerous travel, this film sure did not tell the truth in its trailers! Throwing Liam Neeson's face on an adventure film poster these days assures the viewer that one will see @$$ kicking justice, feel vindicated parental authority, and hear the warm, gruff brogue that makes it all so soothing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/feb/04/liam-neeson-after-a-friend-was-raped-i-wanted-to-kill-a-black-man" target="_blank">(most of the time)</a> despite the bloodshed. However, upon sitting down, to see this film recently - delayed I know, but excited nonetheless - I found myself deeply disappointed... and then struck by possible revelation.<br />
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The studio pitch is perfectly clear in my mind: the director said, "My movie is <i>Alive</i> meets <i>Dances With Wolves </i>meets horror movie conventions, with Liam Neeson!" And the studio said, "Here's the check!" A plane full of oil rig workers, on their way to Anchorage from a remote drilling site for a little R&R, crashes in the Alaskan wilderness. Only seven survive, one of whom is Ottoway (Neeson), paid by the oil company to keep the wildlife from killing the oil workers with his sharpshooting skills and knowledge of nature. We witness his take-down of a rapidly advancing wolf on a pack of, I'm sorry, on a <i>group</i> of oil workers almost immediately, so we know he's good at his job. Splice in shots of a now seemingly absent, beloved wife as she and Ottoway lie reclining on snowy white sheets (keep this in mind...), a scene of Ottoway's aborted suicide attempt, and we are primed for a redemption story.<br />
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However, on first viewing, the film breaks the sacred contract with American film history and American film audiences and seems to have lost the last twenty minutes of film! For better or worse, the narrative need for faulty characters to be redeemed, for the wrong to be made at least partially right, has carried us forward through much of cinematic history. From our very foundational American myths, there is the rugged man (and women too, since about 1979) of Adventure Movies who encounters challenge, rises to meet them, succeeds, and goes on to either tell the tale into his old age or have more adventures to come. Yes, some stodgy film critics or pretentious scholars may claim this impulse to
break with "tradition" (that of giving the audience an ending that does not involve complete annihilation) as being great, and proving some cinematic verve or unique spirit. But this is not surrealist French cinema attempting re-define genre. It is a Liam Neeson action film! <br />
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Thus, when we encounter Ottoway and his team of stereotypes, um, I mean, characters, we think we know what is coming. There is some blurriness to who one or two of the men are, but at root we have the father desperate to get home to family (Dermot Mulroney), the annoying jabber-mouth who talks to cover stress and expresses the strain everyone feels (Joe Anderson, much better in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445922/" target="_blank">Across the Universe</a>), the <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BlackDudeDiesFirst" target="_blank">Token</a> Black person (Nonso Anozie), the criminal (Frank Grillo). And then a slightly odd character who can only be thought of as Conscious due to a role he plays towards the end of the film (Joe Anderson - I think my father perfectly described him as the DNA splicing of John Ritter and Mark Wahlberg).<br />
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The sequence of who is attacked and torn apart by wolves follows no seemingly predictable pattern, and one feels little care for the men beyond the usual bets about who will be the "<a href="http://horror-movies.wikia.com/wiki/Final_girl" target="_blank">Final Girl</a>" and how amazingly beautiful, stark, scary, and mesmerizing the scenery is all at the same time. And that is one thing not to be upset about, the film is simply stunning in its depiction of the bitter frosty quality of the Alaskan wilderness, and its simultaneous sublime enchantment. Time is not spent/wasted lovingly caressing tree branches, this isn't a Malick film after all. But we'll say more attention is given to the background than to the men's faces.<br />
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ARRRGGG MATEYS --> WARNING, THERE BE SPOILERS AHEAD!* </div>
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(*Read no further if you want to see the movie and be surprised....)</div>
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But lovely scenery cannot distract one from the fact that this film managed to inspire feelings of depression and disgust similar to what I felt after seeing <i>Requiem For a Dream</i> - and that is a film about the debilitating, deadly, horrible effects of drug use! And I'm not the only one to feel this way, as <a href="http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120125/REVIEWS/120129984" target="_blank">Ebert also makes clear</a>, this is not a pleasant film. The main problem is that upon having one of their number attacked and killed by wolves, the group agrees to what seems to be the Worst Possible idea (Ottoway proposes it) based on flimsy ideas. They decide to leave the protective cover of the plane's fuselage - remaining in two large, semi-enclosed pieces, about fifty yards from the edge of a tree line, in plain sight of any aircraft flying overhead. They leave it to trek out toward some trees a good mile to a half mile away since they <i>might</i> be in the vicinity of the wolves' den and they <i>might </i>be able to move away from the den if they go to the woods. Oh, and there is a random assertion that the oil company will absolutely not look for them for long, will only send out one or two planes, and may not come their way at all.<br />
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Now, only one of the men opposes this idea openly and no one listens to him. And to be clear, at the plane wreckage we are shown: a few trees nearby, long metal pieces (that they use to batter away wolves from Ottoway at one point) - ie weapons, protection from the violent winds, and a defensible metal structure with only two openings they could surely bolster and reinforce. And I am the farthest thing from a defender of corporate behavior, but I think that in this current moment the technology is such that, based on the plane being quite a bit larger than a "puddle jumper," and the presumable regularity of the route, the company can probably figure out where about they went down, and will not take the endless weeks (months?) suffered by the Uruguayan soccer team lost in the Andes in the 1970s. Additionally, although perhaps difficult to get started, setting a tree on fire nearby the fuselage would have the double benefit of keeping the wolves away and sending smoke high, high into the sky in an area with no other fires around!<br />
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Therefore, the decision to leave the plane feels downright idiotic and a slap in the viewers face considering the above, and there was much pseudo-interactive yelling at the screen about it. None of the events that come to pass - death by being torn apart by wolves, death by falling from a 90degree angle against a tree and then falling 100 feet breaking branches to the ground, death by pulmonary embolism/freezing to death, death by drowning, death by giving up... - would have happened if they had stayed at the plane!<br />
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Thus the depressing turn of events is rendered even more so when you realize that No One Makes It Out Alive!! That's right folks, he may <a href="http://m.imdb.com/title/tt0936501/quotes?qt=qt0459504" target="_blank">have a very particular set of skills</a>, but not even Ottoway makes it out alive! For his end, after he lets the Runner Up die by drowning, he engages in a bout of self-pitying yelling at God to give him a sign and a reason to care, believe, keep going, whatever. When no lightening strikes and the helicopter the movies have programmed us to expect fails to materialize, he gets up and keeps walking only to... Walk right into a Wolf Den! Seeing the head wolf tell the others to stand down because Ottoway is His, Neeson tapes broken bottles to one hand and a knife to the other hand. After decorously waiting for him to finish his taping, the wolf lunges at him, the screen cuts to black, and Roll Credits. Sigh.<br />
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Now, after much hateful spilling of vitriol on the film by my viewing party for its shameful assault both on our expectations of Liam Neeson's awesomeness and on the sacred movie myth of survival against all odds, I began looking around for others as depressed as myself with then ending and found possible redemption in one line from a <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-grey/6020" target="_blank">Slant Magazine review</a>. While I disagree with most of Cataldo's laudatory review, I found sudden possibility in this line:<br />
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"[Ottoway] <i>who starts off the film with an abortive suicide attempt. The rest of it plays out almost as if he succeeded</i>..."</div>
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Perhaps it is the instinctive drive towards the redemptive inculcated by so many movies. Perhaps it is the narrative habit learned from <a href="http://mason.gmu.edu/%7Ermatz/close_reading.htm" target="_blank">studying literature</a>, or maybe there is that magic of what is Really Going On at work within this seemingly empty tableau of human male ineptitude in the face of nature. What I now believe is going on pivots on all of Ottoway's reflecting back on those times in bed with his wife and his awakening after the plane crash. </div>
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We know by the end of the film that his wife has not left him, but has died. So laying on those snowy white sheets with her as she died of some unnamed illness also foreshadows his own laying on the white sheet of snow. Ottoway also states at one point that he was raised by an Irish Catholic
father, hence suicide would have been a mortal sin punishable by eternal
damnation. Well what is better damnation than for a man who's job entails protecting men from harm to be incapable of doing so? He awakens after the crash alone in a field of white with snow blowing wildly around him, and he must walk a dozen yards or so to look down on the plane wreckage. If you believe that the religious tenants of his faith will structure his afterlife, then the whole movie is the result of Ottoway's suicide the night before the flight. And his hell is one in which every decision he makes causes the death of more men - leaving the downed airplane being the worst and most important. </div>
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Additionally, I felt it was suggested that the random assemblage of survivors represent different pieces of who Ottoway is as well. The nervous but communicative man (who incidentally was the only one arguing for staying with the plane) dies first, out in the open, as the men begin to rely more on physical endurance and less on logic and reason. The <a href="http://southpark.wikia.com/wiki/Token_Black" target="_blank">Token</a>, sick and coughing constantly, is the memory of his ailing wife who eventually succumbs to disease/cold, and who he is unable to save. The family man dies next by failing to survive his 'leap of faith' across a freakishly deep gorge - his tether was a patchwork of clothing pieces from each man, it failed to hold him aloft, and allowed him to fall and be eaten by wolves.</div>
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We were particularly angry in watching the movie that the Hispanic "criminal" character simply gives up, and sits down to die after being so strong and determined the entire film. But his death makes sense if he represents the fighter part of Ottoway; the part that wanted to survive, but gave up the night before by killing himself. If the criminal is his fighting spirit, then the rest makes much more sense. They even have the same first name: John. </div>
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The next to last man dies by drowning, but only because his foot is stuck in a very easily handled way, but Ottoway does not duck his head under water and pull the man's foot out! So simple, this baptism gone horribly wrong, wherein to just dive under water (he's already soaking wet) and remove the man's foot from the crack between two rocks - but he doesn't. And just before falling into the water the man confides that he saw Ottoway contemplating suicide the night before and recognized the look in his eyes after seeing it in the criminal man's eyes when he sat down to die a few moments before. He asks Ottoway about the look, and prods him, almost as if he were his Conscious and the final obstacle to Ottoway's end... And his name is <a href="http://www.bibletutor.com/level1/program/start/people/peter.htm" target="_blank">Peter</a> by the way. Yes, like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearly_gates" target="_blank">St. Peter </a>who stands at the proverbial pearly gates and decides who gets in or not. </div>
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Finally, Ottoway's idea to strike out across the wide open fields, unprotected, dangerously exposed to the elements and wolves is an idea is also absolutely sensible if this is a man who had planned to, and I believe did, commit suicide. One could say that since he was suicidal, his choices may be simply attributable to this fact and not some freaky trip through his own <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob%27s_Ladder_%28film%29" target="_blank"><i>Jacob's Ladder</i></a> of terror. But, as a man responsible for the survival of others and well versed, presumably, in the survival needs for the region, his decision to leave the craft and offhanded remarks about the company failing to find them is more easily read as part of his punishing afterlife trip than as shamefully poor character development. Bad decisions in life lead to bad decisions in death - now that's narrative structure and character development I can get behind! </div>
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So Ottoway could not and was not destined to save the men since he did not save himself the night before. His final showdown with the lead wolf, a supernaturally massive <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/DarkIsEvil" target="_blank">black (of course) beast</a>, also makes sense in this case. A number of reviewers remarked on the fact that the wolves are <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jan/27/entertainment/la-et-the-grey-20120127-1" target="_blank">freakishly large</a> and seeming to enjoy some <a href="http://www.npr.org/2012/01/26/145665995/its-man-vs-beast-with-liam-neeson-in-the-lead" target="_blank">human levels of reasoning</a> and logic. But if they too are part of Ottoway's hellish punishment, if they are truly the Hounds of Hell, then their stalking and slaughter of these men, these pieces of Ottoway, makes more sense. As does the wolves' decision at the end to treat Ottoway not as a man or prey item, like they treated did the other men, but as another wolf that the current leader of the pack must fight for ultimate supremacy. Then the end is a fight of good versus evil cloaked as a battle of man versus beast. It is really about Ottoway versus his demons made flesh in the body of these supernaturally ever-present wolves that have wiped out all that represents him and his life. </div>
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Thus the film does not wish to maim our sensibilities by confronting us with the impossibility of survival against all odds every time (even though it may do us as humans good to consider death as a possibility occasionally, and act like we have common sense). Instead, the film functions as a meditation on what one man endures because of his lost faith in life, in himself, and in his God after the death of his wife. Far less judgmental than I am perhaps making it seem, but heavy on the meditation. And in this vein, the film is actually pretty fabulous to consider.</div>
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Genre: C
(as adventure, its only ok)<br />
Epidermal/Ethnic Variance: B-<br />Visuals/Audio: B+</div>
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Gender Rep: D-</div>
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(only women here were dying in flashback or dying as stewardesses)<br /><u>Narrative: B </u></div>
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Overall, Gut Says: B </div>
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<br /></div>KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-51246961425926562702012-06-14T09:37:00.000-04:002012-06-14T09:37:45.270-04:00Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)Somewhere in the middle of this film I found myself with a few tears flowing down my cheeks due to the lucious tableaux of small but sturdy folk encircling a funereal pyre in a mythic, magical, mystical forest, combined with the sound of a Capella singing of Celtic mourning hymns - I call them hymns because the tone took me to my Black Baptist church upbringing, when elderly women would break into spontaneous song. I suppose I can call the film its own sort of hymn since Snow White and the Huntsman completes the impossible task of being at once a spiritually engaging meditation on good versus evil and a wonderful summer adventure flick whose well known/worn concerns are here rendered as newly feminist and communal.<br />
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To explain further, this is not your mother's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In this version of events, we meet a spunky Snow whose greatest virtue is not her beauty - although that is noted by many - but her compassionate and warm heart. Whether taking in a bird whose wing needs mending, or accepting with grace and reserve the woman her father, the king, has decided to marry a year after the tragic death of her mother. Chalk this film up as another reminder of why I never yearn for "days of old" when death usually came with unknown cause, and with even greater frequency! But I digress.<br />
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Rupert Sanders reveals himself to be a filmmaker whose eye for visuals binds a seminal story like this one in a new but still understood fashion. Thus the drops of blood from Snow's mother's hand that hit the snow after she pricks her finger (on the rose bush that blooms mysteriously in winter) are as beautiful as the the scene itself - calling to mind the banked nature of winter filled with promise. Yet this moment that inspires her choice of name, when touched so earnestly by Sander's camera, calls up its own irony and sets Snow White among the Apples and Kal-El's of today's naming culture. If it wasn't iconic, how many of us would believe the name patently ridiculous? However, the current moment is called to mind when we consider characters.<br />
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Chris Hemsworth as Thor, I mean, the Huntsman, shakes off some of his self-righteous fury and replaces it with drunken self-righteous fury. To wit, he does display greater depth than he had to as the demi-god forced to take holiday on Earth in <i>Thor</i> (2011). But I find myself still waiting to see what else he is capable of when not in period costume immersed in a character of such firmly rooted history. That said, as a widower in a land without hope for a future, his performance offers a stoic and at times touching grounding in the immediate presence of loss that would have been missing and missed otherwise.<br />
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As our modern Snow White, who is imprisoned for a decade and must lead an army against the evil queen to retake her throne, we have Kristen Stewart. Stewart does a far better job here at conveying emotional complexity and acting chops than in her more famous forays into werewolf/vampire love triangles, although that might not be saying much. I found myself surprised and curious if it was Chris Hemsworth's effective, if at times confused seeming turn as the titular Huntsman that drew out this performance from Stewart - who thankfully did none of the repetitive blinking that stands in for responsive emoting in the Twilight movies! (Not that I don't Love that pulpy gothic blather for its own quirks.) The two of them together, if not really giving off the sparks we are meant to feel between them, do give off the glow of comrades on a common mission and with the common goal of redemption and purpose.<br />
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Of course the One To Watch is Charlize Theron's evil queen Ravena, who oozes a deceit that requests no apologies - although a brief back-story is shoe-horned in for those who may feel need to understand her pain. Sanders' affection for the queen is clear when, as Stewart trudges through yet another dirty swamp in her tattered dress, Ravena slips from one delectable scene and outfit to the next. At one moment nude save her crown and completely covered in milk the consistency of Elmer's Glue, Theron's performance seems to show off the settings, giving them more depth, rather than the other way around. Colleen Atwood's gorgeous costumes - sure to earn her another well deserved nomination unless the Academy members are watching the film while inhaling some of that glue Ravena was drenched in, and get distracted - offer no shortage of eye candy. <br />
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But the film's strength lies in the movement from castle to forest where I doubted my eyes at first, and then thought the filmmakers had found little people who looked exactly like Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Toby Jones and Nick Frost. Only to discover some magical trickery was afoot as they were all simply made to appear small compared to Stewart and Hemsworth. The scenes Snow and the Huntsman spent around forest fires with the "seven dwarfs" could have devolved into hammy, cheesy mockery. But instead, even with limited exposition, the wonderful actors infuse their characters with a humanity that draws the audience in, and you care about them. Hence the scenes where they sing become less hokey repetitions of 'high-ho" and are instead immediately elegiac and bewitching.<br />
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In other words, like a hymn the scenes stir the soul through sound and sight, but possesses a message about the complexity of their relationship to each other and to what Snow represents. When the dwarfs give their allegiance to Snow as the rightful queen who can save the kingdom, and agree to follow her into battle, we're again reminded that we're not in Kansas, err, Disney anymore. As an antidote to the spate of silly fare directed at young girls, full of the concerns of boys and clothes, the film triumphs. Snow's princess is both innocent and tough, capable of carving a three inch trench from forehead to chin in the face of the lecherous brother of the queen, and bringing a thirty foot tall bridge Troll to a sweetly submissive state by the force of her good will alone.<br />
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And despite having the unfortunate designation of Evil Queen, Theron's Ravena is a woman full of the unyielding desire for her own way and the desire for a beauty that she knows (even in medieval times) can ensure one's comfort and success in life. Such commentary is often cloaked in fairy tales, whose moral imperitives were either shoved in or the story altered for them to fit. But here, they are revealed and then subverted by the fact that both women desire to rule, and the preference only goes to the one who seems to show greater care for folks in her kingdom.<br />
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In other words, although Ravena must answer for the evil she does, and she does engage in a lot of vile acts, her punishment feels less an argument that the purity of Snow is preferable to her evil than a suggestion that any woman who rules must needs combine her desire to rule with attention to crops and prosperity as well, or be drummed out by the locals! In this way, Snow's rule is the better since her view of the best kingdom possible is one wherein community and the good of all comes first. And because she doesn't regularly suck the very youth out of random neighborhood girls to keep herself young.<br />
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Community comes even before her own desires, as becomes clear towards the end. One could call it a cheap, cheesy attempt to cash in on the "love triangle" trope running rampant through films and books aimed at youngsters, but the "choice" between her childhood friend William - a forgettable and sad Sam Claflin who suffers from being unable to rescue Snow as a child, and showing up after the Hunk, I mean, the Huntsman - and the Huntsman is about the impossibility of a queen finding a man both suitable to the drawing room, the bedroom, and the battlefield, who won't one day try to take over her throne! Ravena too rules alone after murdering Snow's father, and both women evoke Cate Blanchet's Queen Catherine forced to rule alone if she would have her own will actually prevail. <br />
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Overall, the feminist depth I happily gleaned from the viewing was unnecessary to the group of small children and adolescents there with their parents and the greater crowd of old and young Harlem movie go-ers who, in typical New York City fashion, shouted at the screen "She showed that b#*ch what was up!" as Snow's good triumphed over evil, and laughed good naturedly at the shenanigans of the dwarfs letting in Snow's army by sneaking in the castle and opening the gates. A film that will entrance old and young with its beauty and offer young girls a nice alternative to being a vampire or werewolf's meal/plaything.<br />
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Genre - A-<br />
(as fairy tale action/adventure, its far better than most!)<br />
Epidermal/Ethnic Variance - C+<br />
(some children of different hues and ethnicities at a remote village, otherwise, even magical lands are again for Whites only)<br />
Visuals/Audio - A<br />Gender Rep - A+<br />
(for women re-framing what it means to be princess and in charge!)<br />
Narrative - B+<br /><u>Leaving Theater, Gut Said - B+/A</u><br />
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OVERALL GRADE: A-KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-3432172074179845282012-06-13T04:50:00.002-04:002023-06-02T13:20:46.924-04:00Prometheus (2012)The <a href="http://www.prometheas.org/mythology.html" target="_blank">Greek myth of Prometheus</a> involves a superior and powerful being who, out of compassion and the desire to generously give to his creation, gives fire to mankind, and is punished by his fellow powerful being "colleagues." His punishment is the daily violent consumption of his liver by an eagle - the liver grows back each day. With these images and ideas in mind - that of a god creating a creature both wonderful and violent, and giving a force both destructive and beneficial to that creature, and being punished for it - one cannot help but be enraptured by the questions, and there are many, many questions, raised by Ridley Scott's entrancing film.<br />
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Beginning with our interstellar Prometheus' voluntary self-annihilation at <a href="http://www.zambiatourism.com/travel/places/victoria.htm" target="_blank">Victoria Falls</a>, which allows mankind to exist by dispersing his DNA through the water, the film revolves around questions of sacrifice, consequence, compassion, and how they structure relations between people. The film begins with the discovery by academics of Scottish cave paintings similar to those found all over the world with large beings standing next to much smaller people, and a representation of a specific group of planets far, far away. These scholars of, seemingly all ancient cultures(?!) - Noomi Rapace and a sadly forgettable turn from Logan Marshall-Green - conclude that these alien engineers are suggesting we humans go visit them. For the sake of time I suppose, the methods these two use to determine that the drawing is an invitation is not explored, lending their conclusion an air of farce. As invitations to visit go, this one is probably the most vague and least well explicated or elaborated, but as one character says, they're running on faith - and hoping we'll follow them on some faith too.<br />
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From there the film smartly moves into space, which serves as a blank slate on which to project the crew's desires, both mundane and spiritual. As usual, Ridley Scott's fastidious attention to the environment in which he places his characters can be so lovely as to overshadow them. As is the case with our Ripley/Sigorney Weaver surrogate this time around, Noomi Rapace as Elizabeth Shaw. Between the child-like, tinny, timidly inconsequential quality of her voice, and a dour, flat aura/demeanor that persists even when she is supposed to be happy, the world Scott wraps around Dr. Shaw is frequently more interesting to consider than she is! And unfortunately, even with the cotton stuffing of a similar haircut
and tendency toward survivalist intelligence, her performance falls far, far
short of filling Ripley's shoes. The sparks of fire that Rapace exhibited so easily at times in <i>Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows </i>(2011), and which seared her performance into people's minds in the Swedish version of <i>The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo</i> (2009) are missing here completely, and I left feeling her current It-Girl status to be undeserved, if it lacks the vulnerability, reserve, complexity and power that made Weaver's Ripley someone to cheer for. In other words, Elizabeth was the one character I was supposed to care about most but cared about least. <br />
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As the movie's titular heroine this would make one think the film suffers, but not as much since Scott has filled the other roles with actors of singular grace and nuance. Notably Charlize Theron as the ambiguously motivated and alluringly sibilant Weyland Company representative, Idris Elba as the ship's aloof but humane captain, and Michael Fassbender in a benignly vicious role as the ship's android robot, David. The texture and tone of Fassbender's performance nearly deserves a review all its own, and is thrilling considering that, in what one can only assume to be a nod to the original film, at one point he is still emotionally compelling as a disembodied head! Overall his performance is so wonderful because he perfectly reflects - in gesture, facial tic, vocal modulation - the subliminal questioning about consequence and humanity that the film is obsessed with. For example, when preparing for arrival, as the only sentient "being" awake on the ship, David evokes a creepy voyeurism tinged/satiated by longing with very few spoken lines or movements. His performance fills one with wonder at the complexity of what it means to be human as reflected in what we project onto/into our creations.<br />
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After the perfunctory but necessary opening, we arrive on the planet LV-223 and - in somewhat haphazard fashion - at a site with ancient alien "buildings" - the first place you fly over has alien construction on it, really? Despite the revolutionary, 'first contact for humanity with other sentient life' quality of this discovery, and despite the fact that he is supposed to be a brilliant Ph.D./scholar, Marshall-Green's Dr. Charlie Holloway acts like a frat boy on holiday. This is a man who spends his life in remote locations, for long hours, plying small brushes in delicate strokes, seeking the bits of history that, once assembled, reveal a larger picture. And then over the course of months or longer, he works at carefully preparing to present that work to other people. And yet he displays bizzare inattention to detail and a refusal to engage with the discovery. For example, after understandably insisting on visiting the amazing discovery regardless of there only being six hours of remaining daylight, upon entering the system of tunnels and chambers, he quickly sours on the discovery when live alien beings do not immediately reveal themselves. Holloway turns to calling the central chamber with the massive stone head from the promo posters "just another tomb" without investigating even a fraction as superficially as the others (who, incidentally, are collecting a perfectly preserved alien Engineer's head and checking out massive oozing canisters within twenty feet of him). And he is so disappointed, he takes no samples/specimens, takes no notes, and spends precious time on an alien world getting drunk and laid on the ship. Holloway's further indulgence in downright brutish and insensitive treatment of android David for being a robot feels a bit ham-fisted, sloppy and odd as a way to keep the audience from caring for him too deeply, since we fully expect in a Ridley Scott film to care about those whose lives are lost. Thankfully, the character's unexpected, unusual, and unprofessional behavior is given little screen time, and the performances of the other characters dominate.<br />
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As is to be expected, the film is one of those where folks are picked off one by one, and since poor Ripley's 1979/<a href="http://time.absoluteavp.com/" target="_blank">2122</a> Nostromo crew is unaware of the history of the planet when they stop by to answer a distress beacon, we know none of them will make it home. This film is less concerned with making us care about all of the crew than the first film was, but the encounters between human and planetary "wildlife" makes up a bit for this. The creature effects are beyond amazing, and I was happy to see <a href="http://www.hrgiger.com/" target="_blank">H.R. Giger's</a> delicious manipulation of human reproductive and other body parts again brought to bear on the alien life. What also became clear is that, whether planned or not, the symbolism used in creating Alien's body makes sense considering the same superior beings who created us also created the Alien - albeit very indirectly, accidentally, and against their will. But I won't ruin the fun by saying more... Suffice it to say that more than one scene had the audience, and me as well, groaning out loud over not just the death of a character, but the appearance of the critter that killed them!<br />
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The action sequences are both awe-inspiring and lovely as the crew discovers planet LV-223 to be less cradle of the alien Engineers' civilization and more <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51" target="_blank">Area 51</a>/<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity_%28nuclear_test%29" target="_blank">1950's New Mexico desert</a>. But the real thrill comes from the realization that each character's actions are constantly pushing and pulling at what the cost of sacrifice is, whether the sacrifice is one's body, one's life, one's dignity, or one's ultimate desires. In other words, obvious ideas about 'what it means to be human' aside, the film's
strength lies in the other ideas it plays with. Ridley Scott's film glows with its ability to make the environment itself an active force
compelling choice and suggesting that sacrifice is often as much about the human as it is about the "alien" - ie, the tension between that which is presumably us and that which is profoundly Not us/is hostile to us.<br />
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A bit esoteric a viewing lens, and maybe reading too much? Perhaps. But the unexpected depth and beauty of the film's play with the ideas of compassion and sacrifice made me less annoyed by 1) the number of unanswered central questions and 2) the obviousness of inevitable sequels suggested by the end of the film. By managing to raise similar, but more complex questions than the first Alien, fans of the terrifying and the brainy are both sure to be satisfied, and excited for what Scott has planned next.<br />
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Genre - A+<br />
Epidermal/Ethnic Variance - C+<br />
Visuals/Audio - A<br />
Gender Rep - B <br />
Narrative - B+<br />
Gut Says - A<br />
OVERALL GRADE: B+KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-89383800731820632932011-10-19T01:11:00.012-04:002011-10-19T02:59:18.603-04:00True Blood's Pariah, America's History, and Black Women's RepresentaitonsThere has been a great deal of hate poured on Tara as a character on the show True Blood on HBO in the form of multiple Facebook groups dedicated to hoping she dies, and blog posts complaining about her. Did I mention Tara is a strong, outspoken, often justifiably angry, and determined Black Female character? Sigh.<br /><br />I found the most cogent and sharply examined analysis of the hatred Tara receives so far in a blog post about <a href="http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/08/10/what-do-you-mean-when-you-say-you-want-strong-female-characters/">"Strong Female Characters"</a> at TigerBeatDown.com. Demanding a full reconsideration of what it means to be "strong" in the context of these cinematic and visual media, the author calls upon us to consider why to be "strong" is good for White women - historically rooted perceptions of weakness and and wilting-Lilly quality as natural - and why it is always perceived as very bad for Black women - historically grounded perceptions of Black women as inherently masculine, animal like, the diametric opposite of all that is wonderful and White. Therefore, a strong White woman is good and show's gumption, a strong Black woman is annoying.<br /><br />Unfortunately, I found this analysis through the link in a Think Progress <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2011/08/17/297011/true-bloods-tara-isnt-unloved-because-shes-black-but-because-shes-static/">blog posting</a> about why the brilliant critique at Tiger Beat Down was wrong because Tara is unloved due to being "Static" not due to being Black. If I wasn't also reading <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Black-Body-Reproduction-Meaning/dp/0679758690/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319006564&sr=8-1">Killing the Black Body by Dorothy Roberts</a> and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Black-White-Color-American-Literature/dp/0226769801/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1319006867&sr=1-1#reader_0226769801">Hortense Spillers' Black, White and In Color</a>, I might not be quite so imbued with excitement over TigerBeatDown's insight and anger over this blogger's shortsightedness and seemingly ill-intentioned attack. But alas, reading the history of Black women's treatment within the U.S. will do that to you. But that aside...<br /><br />As is too often the case, liberal, <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/author/arosenberg">well educated, White women</a> still refuse to believe race can play a role in the abuses suffered by a Black woman and other Women Of Color because it would force a questioning of their own relatively privileged position within an extant representational/power hierarchy, within an evolving cultural milieu, and within a functioning historical narrative that prizes their supposedly inherent positive attributes to the detriment of Women Of Color who are perceived as all that is opposed and awful. After one too many frustrated flipping of pages, figurative and literal, to escape their narrow thinking, I decided to answer the lunacy of this blogger, and have included the content below:<br /><br />Alyssa, your comments about Tara with regards to race and her representation on True Blood go from unfair to downright vicious - especially growing as they do out of a desire to declare the profound and insightful commentary at TigerBeatDown.com to be false. You state:<br /><br />"It’s that the character never grows, and exhibits consistently poor judgement [sic], sabotaging a potential relationship with a nice, stable man and taking up with a former criminal, seeking protection with and then falling under the spell of a powerful, chaos-inclined magical entity, and then when she gets therapy and rebuilds her life outside of Bon Temps, sabotages it again for no discernable [sic] reason, taking up with a genocidal witches’ coven."<br /><br />What character on the show miraculously evolves as you would demand of Tara? NONE. Part of the show's allure is the constant danger and impulse of so many characters to constantly make decisions which place them in mortal danger. Thus you could create a list like the one you spill over Tara for any of the other characters on the show! The only one to demonstrably change in any real way is Eric, and only because he suffered a witches curse, now his memory is back and lord knows if he'll stay all sweet.<br /><br />Everyone on the show consistently makes bad decisions - Sookie can only love men who desire to eat her. She slept with Eric! He's hot, but vicious. She didn't pick the hot, available, stable werewolf, but instead the crazy, scary vampire. Or how about Arlene who went from a serial killer to a mildly deranged military vet. Or Sam who consistently does the Wrong thing - whether killing folks in the past or kicking his brother out when what his brother needed was stability, a place to call home without dog-fights, and someone to call him on his BS for a change.<br /><br />But even if we only consider what you are asking of Tara and not her characterization compared to others (even if I think the comparison is sufficient to show similarity, but in the interest of answering the insulting length of your demands...) there is still something amiss in your desire to declare Tara "Static" if we consider what you list as the reasons why she is a static and hated/unloved character:<br /><br />1- Who is this nice stable man she sabotages a relationship with? Who on this show has ever been shown to truly be stable at all? Maybe werewolf man, but then he does change into a beast when the full moon pops up.<br />2- Are you really beyond the ability to understand or see the desire of a child of an alcoholic single mother (with no other family) to take advantage of the shelter and care being offered by a woman with so much to give and other people in need under her care? Can you truly be faulting Tara for being bewitched? Do you fault everyone else for their bewitchment as well? And are You Really asking Tara to have been psychic and discerned that the nice lady was really a maenad intent on destroying her life? Because I refuse to believe that someone who went to college would expect precognition of a Black female character as the grounds for the character to be considered 'dynamic.'<br />3- If you do not know why Tara sent her girlfriend away - to avoid her being hurt/killed - and believe the show's creators so inept as to have had her take up with the coven for no reason - if you watch the show, there is a reason - then I don't know what to say.<br /><br />Clearly, the reasons you present for why Tara is "static" are really reasons rooted in a desire for her character to be superhuman, infallable, maternal, and rooted in a quasi-behavioral Whiteness which you point out as being necessary for this to be possible. And before you dispute this, you do say:<br /><br />"Tara’s character [in the novels] is a recovering abuse survivor who’s sometimes brittle because of it, but she’s also a small business owner, a good friend to Sookie (though they have their fallings [sic] out), a wife and mother—and she’s white. If Ball had kept that character development arc, and committed to that emotional growth, but cast Rutina Wesley in the role, I think we’d think Tara is a hero. Instead, he both made her black and an object of perpetual humiliation. If we’re not cheering Tara it’s because the character has no discernable [sic] investment in her own life and happiness."<br /><br />Now, if you list wonderful things and add, "--and she's white.", then follow by saying, "he made her black and an object of perpetual humiliation", what you are doing, even if inadvertently, is setting up the similarity between the wonderful world of possibility that is White Tara in the book and how awful Black Tara is in the show. You are linking the characteristics to color not for the purpose of clarity, but to further establish why Black Tara is so faulty for this indistinct, intangible but seemingly preferential list of vague plot details. (We'll leave aside discussion for now of all the troublesome undercurrents of your desire to see a Black, single mother Tara character with children.)<br /><br />Done so casually, this comparison is scary to me. Especially because it renders inauthentic your claim to want to add business-owner as a part of Tara's character to make her better. Oh, and a business-owner without any ups or downs natural to all characters on a show, and with a perfect supportive relationship to Sookie at all times. Perhaps one can fault the show for not giving Tara enough purely self-motivated, self-oriented actions, but to demand perfection is... odd.<br />And it goes without saying that None of the characters demonstrate a serious investment in their own happiness as far as making good decisions.<br /><br />When you present such an insubstantial and specious list of reasons for why Tara is hated by so many, and use it as a direct assault on the sound, historically and theoretically grounded arguments of the authors at TigerBeatDown.com, I would question the stakes for you in derailing the cause of honest discourse about women and racial representations on TV. I would question your reasons for trumpeting Tara as "perpetually humiliated" rather than as an able, adaptable, strong, survivor of multiple horrific incidents who still manages to support her friend Sookie by refusing to sugar-coat the truth or allow her to make crazy decisions without reflection. The best moments are when they are honest and real with each other about what is going on, even if one end up angry about it. So again I ask, what is at stake for you in derailing the cause of Honest discussion about these representations the way you are?KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-85193880954986168672011-06-27T10:06:00.003-04:002011-06-27T10:10:32.676-04:00Kerry Washington Lovely in Lift (2001)Comment in response to <a href="http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B05EFD7163FF93AA15750C0A9679C8B63">Elvis Mitchell's</a> review of this wonderful little film:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Lift</span> (2001) is a sharp, witty cinematic effort, giving us well drawn characters whose lives we care about. Its also a stunning turn by Kerry Washington in a heavy indictment of consumer culture. It is filled with complex and generous portrayals of these characters. And even if the reasons underpinning their desire for the designer goods is something which the audience is expected to know already - which, depending on the viewing audience could determine whether these characters end up stereotyped or understood - the actors still give them such depth one should feel for them.<br /><br />Elvis Mitchell calls these young Black characters small-minded and short-sighted, but this is an ungenerous read at best and at worst its a rough essentializing. Especially because, at its most poignant, this film proves that ironically, the accusations of otherness slopped onto Black people in the U.S. can easily be disproved when one considers the fact that the All American Love of bigger, better, more, now is shared by White and Black Americans! If nothing else we know that the oppressed, or formerly oppressed, follow the suit of their oppressors, so if we are to nag these young people for their behavior, we must condemn all American culture for making it seem there is nothing in life but to own and have more stuff...<span style="font-style:italic;"></span>KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-39751811287356002632011-06-21T03:28:00.007-04:002023-06-02T09:31:15.200-04:00Jennifer's Body (2009): Misunderstood Brilliance<i>Jennifer's Body</i> suffers from a few major afflictions: reviews that want it to be something <a href="http://www.dreadcentral.com/reviews/jennifers-body-blu-ray-dvd">gorier or more evil</a> than it is, reviews that attack it for an assumption of <a href="http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/review/2009/09/18/jennifers_body/">cheap opportunism</a>, and some reviewers that plain just <a href="http://www.sbs.com.au/films/movie/4357/Jennifer-s-Body">don't understand at all what's going on</a>. <br />
<br />What is going on is that, within the context of a friendship of lopsided power dynamics but seeming genuine affection between two teen girls, the more dominant and narcissistic friend is sacrificed to a demon by a group of young men so they can be a successful rock band. This sacrifice turns her into an undead succubus who must then consume young men to survive. Her best friend must then decide how she might be stopped, while navigating the tricky terrain of their lifelong friendship.<br /><br />
I felt compelled to write this review not because Diablo Cody has created the perfect horror movie, or even one it seems most (male?) horror fans will enjoy. The film does suffer a few moments of seemingly forced dialogue which only works because Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried produce such wonderful, natural feeling performances. The reason why this film is amazing has to do with it being the logical conclusion to or heir apparent to<i> <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0377092/">Mean Girls</a></i> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0406650/"><i>Chumscrubber</i></a>: The Perfect White Suburban Female Horror flick. Playing on the suburban malaise and disconnections which sometimes structure empty lives, this film ensures we feel fear at the thought of the dark underbelly of small town American teens! Rather than a rehash, it takes <i>Mean Girls </i>to another level, one where female friendships and rapidly proliferating youthful apathy are revealed to be the true terror and not some indestructible man in a mask.<div><br /></div><div><b>Aaaarghh! There be Spoilers Ahead!</b> <br />
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In dreadcentral.com's review - which at times implies that that Diablo Cody does not understand even the basics of narrative structure - they accuse the film of being too concerned with seeming important, and using a whirlpool as a useless plot device at the film's climax. I argue here that part of what they've missed is that Cody and Kusama are all too aware of both the levity and weight of the film, and have used each element purposefully. <br />
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It may not be a strictly feminist horror film - Needy escapes, but after all they do kill Jennifer in the end, bad form! But the film does a great job at revealing the true horror, fear, resentments, distrust, and oppression at the center of so many female friendships!! All women at sometime have thought a friend to be a demon: evil, ruthless, heartless, cruel, and capable of infinite evil. This film is what would happen if one could prove it. Therefore the whirlpool is far from a useless plot point, and is instead a potent visual metaphor for a number of things: <br />
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First, the terrible fear most civilizations have of female sexuality as that swirling thing that may have no depths, operates beyond man's comprehension, and can consume infinitely. It is no mistake that one of the film's early scenes is of two men dumping boxes of balls into the whirlpool (to try and understand its trajectory and operations) which are consumed by the vortex and never seen again. This gynephobic undercurrent may be represented, to me at least, in somewhat heavy-handed fashion, but I have yet to read a review that points this out, which means folks are missing the significance and it is a cool thing to note!!<br />
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Second, the vortex that bad female friendships can become, sucking energy, joy, even life out of you even as you find them impossible to escape. See the previous comments about female friendships.<br />
<br />Third, and finally, the terrifying depths of female abjection and violation in the face of stronger men. It is no mistake that it is near that infinite whirlpool that the band decides to sacrifice Jennifer to a demon. Ostensibly she has to be sacrificed in the name of the band's financial success, but the placement near the whirlpool reminds one of the vast numbers of women who go missing, are raped, assaulted, and abused worldwide and whose cries are either laughed at or go unheard altogether. <br />
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Reviewers complaining about the improbability of Cody's language have spent little time around groups of girls age 13 to 19, because the made up slang, the viciousness, and constant pushing and testing is a hallmark of current female interaction - the latter to a disturbing degree I believe. And scenes in the classroom, of Jennifer's demon possessed form laughing about death and sadness is not so far fetched in our mass media, rapidly evolving, 24 hour news cycle lives. A reviewer in Australia complained that the movie fails to create anything a viewer could identify with as scary. Well he clearly has never been in a female friendship.<br />
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If there's anything to truly complain about in this film it is the narratively necessary and therefore inevitable, but ultimately uninspiring demise of Jennifer. In a womanist read of the film, Jennifer lives a toxic-masculinist dream: taking on "lovers" when she wants, disposing of them at will, and using their adoration and fear of losing out on the opportunity she offers to suck them dry of energy and leave them empty in her wake. How many films celebrate just this sort of male behavior wherein women occupy cardboard placement in service to men's sexual whims or maternal needs? I adore <i>The Hangover, Wedding Crashers,</i> and <i>Swingers</i>, but these films are no friends to women.<br />
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Here, unlike in for example <i>Weird Science</i> (1985), Jennifer as whirlpool does the supernatural selecting and discarding. Her death therefore somehow feels an appeasement of scared male egos - the film's scientists - who really just want that whirlpool to be clarified, contained, and understood. Beyond the usual requirement that horror films punish the bad (often) and save our heroine (sometimes), it seems that Jennifer has to die for her bad friendship, her ruthless high school demeanor, but most importantly for her murder of young men whose only crime was to fall for her beauty imagining it covered a nice person too. Hence the film requires Needy's discovery of the end of the whirlpool, the end of Jennifer's sexually charged rampage through male flesh, the end of male fear of the unpredictable or dangerous in dreamily imagined encounters with strange, hot women. After all, men need to believe there are hot women out there who will sleep with and satisfy them without then eating them afterwards. <br />
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What does the whirlpool mean for Needy? In one read, we could say that Needy has discovered her own empowered connection to the whirlpool's violent, powerful possibility - she has become part demon after all, and can truly enjoy her sexuality, refusal to be a victim, and no-nonsense attitude. Now, Needy may become the perfect melding of Jennifer's power, sensuousness, and self-containment, and her own composed, moral, logical self. Thus, in truly amazing and womanist inspired writing, Jennifer and Needy are two halves of a whole, and the perfect woman is and can be (if she wants) a mix of the sassy and sweet, brutal and tender, powerful and empowering!<br />
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However, in a more likely read, the discovery of the end of the whirlpool still harkens back to scary female sexuality since the end of the whirlpool equals the earlier deposited, disembodied balls and an obscenely large hunting knife - <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-psychoanalysis/" target="_blank">castration anxiety</a> anyone? And why does the whirlpool seemingly dump out on the side of an empty stretch of road? A lonely no-man's land, where the next person Needy encounters is a motorist played by actor Lance Henriksen. Yes, Henriksen who has been forever <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/">immortalized on celluloid</a> as being the male representation of how terrifying and destructive a force reproduction is - pregnancy is death! BUT this does not spell the complete death knell of womanist/feminist readings, and I would have to really stretch to believe Cody and Kusama did not want a less sad reading of this film.<br />
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All in all, I found this film full of the necessary frights - that evil friend just might kill me or destroy my life or steal my boyfriend and eat him!! It had genuinely scary moments - groups and solitary men do in fact kidnap and torture women all the time - and legit representations of youthful behavior - I have actually heard dialogue from high schoolers and middle schoolers that eerily resembles this film's dialogue... The film Kick's Ass!!<br />
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So reviewers out there, give the film a shot and stop hating just because its "cool" to hate it! The creative minds behind <i>Girl Fight </i>(2000) and <i>Juno</i> (2007) deserve more consideration than you've given them!!</div>KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-41594753525013056892011-05-28T19:24:00.002-04:002011-05-28T19:28:49.631-04:00Hangover II: The Hunt For Greater OffensivenessIn response to The Hangover II's completely tone-less, tasteless, and inappropriate use of iconic imagery, I searched the internet for a review which also mentioned this mis-fire. Here's my comment based on <a href="http://www.richardroeper.com/reviews/review.aspx?ReviewId=326">Roeper</a>'s review of the film:<br /><br />Thank God one reviewer has said it! My husband, brother and I thought we were the only ones to notice the horribly offensive and far, far from funny re-enactment of the <a href="http://www.famouspictures.org/mag/index.php?title=Vietnam_Execution">iconic Viet Nam war photograph of a man being executed by a gunshot to the head</a> during the end credits. While I argued that there is no way Phillips could actually have thought this would be funny and had done it unintentionally (using an image stuck in his head but not purposefully referring to this horrible image), my brother and husband argue that he intentionally used it and thought it would be funny. Regardless, I am happy to hear someone else point out its taste-less-ness and as an end to what had in general been expected and tolerable offensiveness, closing with this intolerable image has left us with a terrible taste in our mouths.KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-41128858095876632892011-05-15T02:33:00.002-04:002011-05-15T02:36:39.139-04:00Pushing Women's Humor Back Into The Stone Age....Response to <a href="http://www.npr.org/2011/05/13/136183144/bridesmaids-a-raunchy-hilarious-chick-flick#commentBlock">Edelstein</a>'s review of BrideWars over at NPR:<br /><br />Dear Edelstein,<br /><br />As a female-of color-English Ph.D. student with very broad interests and sensibilities, I am having trouble figuring out in what way your 'review' of this film is most offensive! Is it:<br /><br />1)In its essentializing of the female experience - as if there is some exclusively female frailty that is inherent and prohibitive of certain behavior. In other words, you seem to believe that if men find it funny women can't as well because...?<br /><br />2)In your presumption that to be Female is to only find specific (what, "ladylike"?) forms of humor funny or acceptable. The scene at the bridal shop became more funny for me than for my husband because he doesn't know the value/cost of bridal gowns (I do) nor the strain women regularly are under Not to allow any untoward smells to escape their person- let alone a food poisoning explosions. For the women of our group, this made the scene a cathartic rush revealing that we too are human... and in pain over that gorgeous ruined gown!<br /><br />3)Your reduction of Melissa McCarthy's wonderful and emotionally complex performance to one of playing off of her Girth! There was more nuance and grace to her portrayal than you give her credit for, and your review smacks of your inability to see beyond her weight.<br /><br />Part II:<br /><br />I'm sorry, but I must make one more comment or suggestion about what makes this review problematic - as 'Analytical Ph.D. Student' I cannot fail to give "suggested reading" if I take issue with an argument.<br /><br />It seems that at best, this Review would be better described as an ill-intentioned and oddly toned Referendum on what women are or are not permitted to find humorous, or what experiences women are or are not entitled to have/claim as part of their functioning as human beings in an American cultural setting!<br /><br />I suggest you watch the South Park episode on queefing. (Though unladylike I suppose, there is no other more appropriate and simple word to choose.) I thought they did a great job at highlighting that women have a sense of humor as well that can intersect with bodily (mal)functions.<br /><br />Women have bodies too, and in some ways are more of our bodies than men are by virtue of our frequent object status. (See fast food places giving girls dolls and boys trucks in kid's meals.)<br /><br />There is a prim propriety thrust upon women which I am happy to see these hysterical, bright women shake off the yoke of in this film! Please stop trying to tie them back down with antiquated, prescriptive genre titles.KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-69273928091049888732011-02-02T14:34:00.001-05:002011-02-04T18:19:24.643-05:00Subway StoriesSubway Stories is a wonderful collection of short films based on stories submitted by real New Yorkers. Suffice to say the subway offers a prime public forum for discovering all the variations of human behavior, so a film featuring many vignettes about this amazing system, would have to try hard to do a poor job. Luckily for us, this film is a wonderful gem! <br /><br />I've written on it for a paper in the past, and hope to deepen my discussion in the future. But even after writing on it many times, I never fail to wish I could easily access the information for this movie. IMDB doesn't have the directors separated out according to each of their respective shorts, and there is no summary provided for each short film either. So I have watched the film again and carefully recorded all the information I wish was available.<br /><br />Plot:<br /><br />Subway Stories - structured similarly to films such as Paris, Je T'aime and New York, I Love You - is divided according to director into short films, each with their own title, but strung almost seamlessly together.<br /><br />"Subway Car From Hell"<br />Directed by Jonathan Demme, written by Adam Brooks<br />Acting as bookend narratives which open and close the film, and starring Bill Irwin, this short film follows the attempts of a didgeridoo player to grab a bite to eat and navigate the subway system during a particularly crowded time of the day. Interactions with other people are framed through the actors talking directly into the camera. The second, end clip finds him adjacent to the 42nd Street Shuttle; ironically marking the film's end at the juncture of dozens of trains and subways.<br /><br />"The Red Shoes"<br />Directed by Craig McKay, written by John Guare<br />Starring Christine Lahti, Denis Leary, and N'Bushe Wright, this segment portrays an altercation between an angry wheelchair bound homeless man, and the business woman who he manages to enrage by repeatedly running over her feet with his chair. As another woman becomes involved, things take an unexpected turn into moral quandary, and it becomes clear that the subway-car-bound court of public opinion can as easily convict as free you.<br /><br />"The 5:24"<br />Directed by Bob Balaban, written by Lynn Grossman<br />Starring Steve Zahn and Jerry Stiller, this short follows the conversations between a wary young financial analyst and a seemingly brilliant, wise, older, and allegedly retired analyst who claims working in an office, though lucrative, would take the fun out his predictive abilities. When the older man proposes and investment that appears too good to be true, will the young analyst set aside his fears and gamble his savings on the older man's lucrative proposal?<br /><br />"Fern's Heart of Darkness"<br />Directed by Patricia Benoit, written by Angela Todd<br />Starring Bonnie Hunt as the titular Fern, and with a non-speaking appearance by Mekhi Phifer, this short follows the conservatively dressed Fern, a visitor to the city who is attempting to take the subway, rather than a cab, to a friend's home. Falling victim not to crime, but to her own fears and assumptions about big city people, whether or not they appear different from herself, Fern refuses to ask for or accept help from anyone, and finds herself lost and locked underground overnight.<br /><br />"The Listeners"<br />Directed by Seth Rosenfeld, written by Ken Kelsch<br />Starring Michael Rapaport and Lili Taylor, this short examines the age-old problem of communication in relationships when Belinda accuses her boyfriend of not listening to her. Her angry shift of location to another car, and brief conversation about politics with a suited older man who seems at first to just be friendly, reveals that in the city, listening, hearing, and understanding are far more complicated, communal activities than one might have thought.<br /><br />"Underground"<br />Directed by Lucas Platt, written by Albert Innaurato<br />Starring Mercedes Ruehl as a sensual older woman with unusual appetites, this short asks and answers the question: what does a young man dumped by his girlfriend and beat up by her ex-boyfriend and his friends need to soothe his bruised face and ego?<br /><br />"Honey-Getter"<br />Directed by Alison Maclean, written by Danny Hoch<br />Nicole Ari Parker and Sarita Choudhury star in this short as Sharon and Humera, attractive law students heading home after a late night out. Tired and boarding the train alone, although it is far from empty, Humera is groped by two immature, offensive young men. However, the end of this short reminds you that, in a city like New York, appearing to be an easy target does not make one an easy target, and you would be well advised to avoid bothering or abusing anyone.<br /><br />"Sax Cantor Riff"<br />Written and directed by Julie Dash<br />Starring Taral Hicks, and with a brief appearance by Sam Rockwell, this short celebrates the unexpected musical gifts which the subway can give. In overlapping duets between a saxophone player, accompanying first a gospel singer, and then a Jewish singer, one finds the subway to be an underground Carnegie Hall - whether the music is born of the grief wrought by experiencing the death of a parent over a public telephone, or produced by the heart-rending lament of a Hasidic man's unexpected emotional outpouring.<br /><br />"Love on the A Train"<br />Directed by Abel Ferrara, written by Marla Hanson<br />Starring Rosie Perez and Gretchen Mol, this humorous short follows a newly married man who develops an utterly silent, distracting, sensual relationship with an attractive woman on the subway. Although they never speak, they spend their morning commute lightly rubbing against each other, while appearing to only lean against a pole. Will his marriage survive this odd, but addictive morning infidelity? Will he and the woman ever speak?<br /><br />"Manhattan Miracle"<br />Directed by Ted Demme, written by Joe Viola<br />Gregory Hines, world renowned dancer, stars here as a compelling and expressive observer who cannot ignore a woman in trouble on the other platform. With a soundtrack of Vivaldi's Concerto for Cello in D Minor providing atmosphere, he watches with growing concern and fear as a distressed pregnant woman across from him decides whether to commit suicide by jumping onto the tracks. His act of skipping a train to try and gain the woman's attention and keep her from jumping, reveals in part why this short is a worthy capstone to this finely rendered collection.<br /><br />This information will also be posted at Wikipedia under the pre-existing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subway_Stories">Wikipedia Subway Stories</a> listing, but until I have a second to enter the symbols so the code works, here it is now!KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-30662925320341987682010-05-26T04:02:00.002-04:002010-05-26T04:08:00.214-04:00Just Wright: The Remarkable AverageNote, I haven't seen the movie yet. But I was so inspired by this review at the <a href="http://www.pajiba.com/film_reviews/just-wright-review-when-hiphop-stars-sell-out-they-sell-out-hard.php">Pajiba</a> website, that I had to respond:<div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="white-space: pre-wrap; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><i>Dustin, dude, what you're missing completely about this film is the very "Cosby" quality you've touched on, and which is all too often missing from movies filled with Black/African American characters. You point out the absent stereotypes, but fail to realize that even recognizing that void is a kudos to the movie! No one goes to see 'Leap Year' and bemoans the absence of conflict due to a lack of white/Irish female stereotypes! Yet (as I strain everyone's patience to point out the obvious) it is so very, very hard to make a film about Black characters that steers clear of the stereotypical, and lands warmly in run-of-the-mill possible drama-lite, that for the makers to have done so gets my vote! <br /><br />So thank you for your review which has actually made me want to go see the movie for the things you point out as for the things you forget, such as: Latifah's win of Common over the much skinnier Patton - reminding one that body politics in the Black community tend to be much less clear cut than in mainstream culture. And the film's reminder to the many Black women out there who see a basketball player as a meal ticket (and Oh I know some of them), that to be happy, you should build relationships on emotional connections more than on the money. These messages, far from veering into the stereotypical, are still nonetheless speaking to a Black audience. An audience which, as the Obama's have proved, is a much more nuanced entity than most folks imagine!</i></span></span></span></div>KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-11941475446088087262010-02-22T09:47:00.002-05:002010-02-22T09:52:36.524-05:00Nolan to Reboot Superman? Wonderful!In response to a dowdy, grumpy article on upcoming <a href="http://www.film.com/features/story/five-reasons-christopher-nolan-shouldnt/32254688">Superman</a> movies, again at Film.com. I've included the parts of his article that I am directly responding to below my text:<div><br /></div><div>The lines you draw between what Superman isn't versus what Nolan is/does are at best hazy and when fully thought out, plain non-existent!<br /><br />1) Superman is not dark you say... but he is sad. How is sadness at being the very last one of your species on a planet that alternately hates and adores you not a cause for darkness? And so what that Clark represented some faulty ideal of perfection from the 1940s, those folks are sooo not interested nor paying to see giant, fun, complex, loud summery blockbusters like this! Who is going? Young(ish) audiences (and by young I mean everything from early 40's down to teens) who understand that "with great power comes great responsibility" is the freakin' superhero code! And like any nuanced code (or set of supernatural rules to live by) it is fully subject to the twisted pull of desire that power on that magnitude inspires! A Superman who perhaps taps into the allure of "I can do whatever I want!" would fully reboot the franchise! We don't want the goody goody Clark anymore, and the most recent attempt to reboot things made that superclear - goody goody Clark = boring! We are smarter and live in a much more complexly considered world than those 1940s folks did!<br /><br />2) Superman is not a detective... he's a reporter. What part of reporting is not about digging into the crevices to discover the truth - like a good detective? The only difference between the two positions is that one gets paid after he does all the work to write it all down and share his good detective skills with the world! Tell Woodward and Bernstein that they weren't Investigative Editorial Detectives when they uncovered the Watergate scandal!!<br /><br />3)... well you get the idea. I will stop here, but not before cautioning you that this review sadly smacks (and that is the perfect dentured adjective) of old timey, crotchety grandpa syndrome wherein you protest the new for the sake of maintaining some older version of perfection that no one can connect to at all anymore! Maybe Superman needs to revisit his roots, whether under Nolan's care or not, since kids don't all know the history! Heck, my husband's a teacher in his early 30s and his students don't even remember music or films from the mid-1990's let alone action figures from the 1980's! They think old is 20!<br /><br />Remember that cinema is one of those storytelling machines that can and must use new blood, new thinking about the same ideas every once and a while - especially with regards to our Superheroes who, after all, are really just reflections of what we believe our capacity to see an Ideal World, or perfect response to our current world, would be.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>Original Article Points I Speak To:</div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: rgb(102, 102, 102); "><h1 style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); line-height: normal; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; font-weight: normal; border-top-width: 1px; border-right-width: 1px; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-left-width: 1px; border-top-style: solid; border-right-style: solid; border-bottom-style: solid; border-left-style: solid; border-top-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-left-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Five Reasons Christopher Nolan Shouldn't Oversee Superman</span></h1><div class="subheadline"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">We loved Memento and The Dark Knight... but we're not so sure about a dark Superman.</span></div><div class="subheadline"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; "><span class="authorName"><a href="http://www.film.com/authors/c-robert-cargill/32254688" style="color: rgb(75, 128, 162); font-size: 1em; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; ">C. Robert Cargill</a>, </span> <span class="story_byline" style="font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; margin-top: 5px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 6px; margin-left: 0px; border-top-style: none; border-right-style: none; border-bottom-style: none; border-left-style: none; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; border-width: initial; border-color: initial; "><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102); ">Feb 16, 2010</span></span></span></span></div><div class="subheadline"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 17px; "><p style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1em; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 7px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; ">Here's why it sounds like a bad idea.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1em; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 7px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><strong>1) Superman ISN'T a dark hero.</strong> First and foremost, Superman isn't a dark character and neither are his villains. Superman is larger-than-life. He is the last member of an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krypton_%28comics%29#Survivors" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(75, 128, 162); font-size: 1em; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; ">otherwise mostly extinct race</a>, making him a lonely outcast who makes the best of his existence here. At his best, he is the embodiment of everything right and good with 1930s/40s America, while having lost (or never possessed) the negative elements of that era. He is Mom, baseball, and apple pie, and he stands for "truth, justice, and the American way." There's NOTHING dark about him or his story, only a sadness that drives his overtly boy scout tendencies.</p><p style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 1em; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 7px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; "><strong>2) Superman isn't a detective.</strong> Nolan thrives telling noir-ish detective stories. Superman isn't a detective. He's a reporter. He hits things. Hard. And flies fast. And burns holes in things. And blows cold air that freezes things. Thinking? That ain't his style. He's not dumb, but a good Superman story isn't about him tracking down criminals; it is about a world in peril with only one man who can save it.</p><div><br /></div></span></div><div><br /></div></div>KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-69356945987099983032010-02-22T09:44:00.002-05:002010-02-22T09:47:33.893-05:00Anaconda Rocks!!This is a post I made in reply to <a href="http://www.film.com/movies/anaconda/story/erics-bad-movies-anaconda-1997/22828234">Eric's Bad Movies</a> at Film.com who slammed Anaconda in his review:<div><br /></div><div>Ok, first of all Anaconda is fabulous because of what you say above, but you forget that it also rocks because it features pre-Affleck J.Lo! We all forget how chill, promising, and great she was before she took up with that no-talent @$$ clown Affleck, and they got all jointly stuffy/plasticky in a weird, very ken and barbie matching outfits kinda way. Before that she was Selena! She was someone Soderberg would cast opposite George Clooney! (Who incidentally said one of his favorite all time movie experiences was being closed up in a trunk pressed against J.Lo in Out of Sight. But I digress.)<br /><br />I also wanted to suggest that you add to the "Unintentionally Hysterical" category: The Ring, Notes on a Scandal, and (I'm going straight to hell, but...) The Passion of the Christ. I attended all of these movies with different groups of friends, and at each film, we all ended up laughing over and over at things that were clearly not meant to be funny!<br /><br />In fact, the screening of Notes on a Scandal was a special advance screening- which we frequently enjoy here in La Manzana Grande- the filmmakers happened to be in front of us, and during one very funny moment, we were chastised for ruining the movie experience for everyone! To this day I think of the feedback I gave them for that movie: "Its a light-hearted cautionary tale about the dangers of being kind to the elderly."</div>KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6757179084651288168.post-39226395328387336572010-02-19T09:59:00.001-05:002010-02-22T10:08:33.564-05:00Pandorum - Not Amazing, But Entertaining!My response to an article at <a href="http://www.themovieblog.com/2009/09/pandorum-review">The Movie Blog</a> that I thought treated Pandorum unfairly:<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">“The ultimate mystery of the film is essentially irrelevant. Where is the ship now and how did they get there SHOULD have been the ultimate questions throughout the film, but never does the audience care or are made to feel the need to care. By the time the “mystery” is revealed at the end it feels pointless. A big “reveal” in a movie should do something to alter how an audience perceived or increase their understanding of all that came before it (think of how the reveal in “The Sixth Sense” does that), but in Pandorum, it’s just another fact to end the movie that on a practical level changes or would have changed anything else in the movie up to that point, and thus felt like useless noise by the time they finally got to it.” </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">– Reviewer John C. </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">So, I have to take issue with this entire paragraph both as a Cine-Fanatic and as an engaged film watcher! First, the “where are we?” question was not and could not have been the central question of the film because this is not a film about destinations. This is a film about “it doesn’t matter where we are because we still try to rip eachother apart!” </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Second: additionally I didn’t feel myself ‘caring’ about where they were and I wasn’t upset with the fact that the characters seemed mystified by the origins of the monsters because I do not suffer from that all too common malady of reviewers (and film-goers alike) known as “Omniscient-itus” wherein you project your ability to See All from outside the screen as something the characters too should be able to do as well!! The actor playing Bower was so amazing that I didn’t notice that it was clear to me that these monsters were mutated people! All I knew was that in such a disoriented and hopeless state, I could totally understand that level of ignorance. </span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">(SPOILER ALERT – key ending details below! read no further to avoid knowing too much about the end!) </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p> <p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Finally, the big ‘reveal’ at the end should, as you say, change how you thought about what came before. In amazing films (Sixth Sense, American Psycho) you are completely thrown off balance and find yourself opened up to great new ideas! In pretty good films – and Pandorum is a pretty good film – one comes away having sensed what the end might be ahead of time, but wondering why that ending still felt unsettling. For example, in light of what happened in 800 years on that ship, why am I not completely excited for those people to bring a similar evolutionary trajectory to the new planet? Should humanity have made it? I find myself confused by the sameness of our imaginations in films like this – why do we always see ourselves this way, but still want the hopeful ending? </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"> </p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">No, its not a perfect film, but by and large it was very entertaining and thought provoking if you imagine yourself as these few survivors! </span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">AND one additional comment on Pandorum in response to a post over at <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/pandorum/article1300178/">Globe and Mail</a>:</span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia, serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:georgia;">I'm sorry but I have to disagree with Mr. Reasonable. This film surprised me over and over again, perhaps because I expected it to be a cheesy somewhat stupid endeavor, or perhaps because the filmmakers put in a tremendous effort to craft a haunting film experience.<br /><br />Not that anyone will win oscars, but the characters feelings of loss and confusion were compelling, the multi-lingual/cultural nature of the cast was wonderfully refreshing, and the ship interiors were far less cheesy than some reviewers accuse them of being.<br /><br />This seems to be one of those films where it is fashionable to dislike it rather than consider what it is attempting to do and give it the benefit of your indulgence. Considering the crap that I have sat through in my life, this held and entertained me at each turn as I tried to figure out what each potentiality for what was 'really going on' could be doing/could mean as commentary on our current times. Because this film, like all good science fiction, offers us a peek into the underside of the niceness of everyday to where the slugs and dirt of the unsaid reside!<br /><br />Give it a chance, ignore Nadia's acting, remember that of course there have been scifi films before, but how is this one doing? I say, pretty good!</span></span></span></p><p></p> <br /></div>KL Moorehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12985114430568361414noreply@blogger.com0