Oz the Great and Powerful, Valhalla Rising, Volver, Story of GI Joe

By Popular Demand

Never had much use for boxoffice figures; never thought the approval of the moviegoing public was all that important, or an indicator of a film's quality, or relative lack of.

Once in a while, though I find myself in the embarrassing position of agreeing with everyone else. In which case I plead pure coincidence, and point to that old adage-- how does it go again? A stopped clock is right twice a day? 

Well, maybe not that one. But I do suspect that public opinion is smarter than the critical establishment is willing to admit. 

Case in point: Sam Raimi's Oz the Great and Powerful. Critics describe it as not "knowing its own mind," or "visually overcrammed, empty mega-spectacle"-- which is funny, because Raimi has never been known for sticking to one genre, even in his own movies, and was never a believer in visual restraint. The man likes over-the-top comic-book action, and unlike some filmmakers I can think of who can't even do that properly, he is superb at it.

The Wild Robot (Chris Sanders, 2024)

The mild robot

Dreamworks' latest (and arguably last to be fully animated in-house) movie has at least two things going for it: 1) the flattened handmade painterly look of the Spiderverse movies and Puss n Boots: The Last Wish that's currently all the rage; and 2) the fact that it's not Pixar or Disney.

On the minus side are two: 1) It's not Pixar or Disney but sure as hell feels like a Pixar or Disney movie; 2) most everything else.

Zootopia (Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush, 2016)

Animal house

Disney's latest (directed by Byron Howard, Rich Moore and Jared Bush, from a screenplay by Jared Bush and Phil Johnston, story by a menagerie of writers) proposes an unlikely community where predator and prey live in uneasy harmony. 

The burg, officially named 'Zootopia,' looks suspiciously like Disneyland: towering central structure much like Cinderella's Castle from which radiates neatly divided 'lands' with neatly assigned themes (Tundraland, Rainforest District, Sahara Square, Little Rodentia) and neatly divided microclimes (freezing, humid, arid, urban), not to mention a fast-gliding monorail linking all realms together. The movie borrows details from The Godfather and Who's Afraid of Roger Rabbit and granddaddy of neo-noirs Chinatown (from which Roger Rabbit cribs much of its own plot) to present a mystery: who's kidnapping the citizens of Zootopia (mainly predators), and can a rabbit (Officer Judy Hopps, voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) and con-artist fox (Nick Wilde, voiced by Jason Bateman) work together long enough to solve the case?* 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

(Warning: plot twists and story discussed in detail)  

The Forced Turducken

Ingredients:


One (1) putrefying carcass of once-popular movie franchise.

One (1) fanatic fan base composed of millions of acolytes (cerebral cortex removed).

One (1) director fast becoming better-known for rebooting tired old series than original projects.

One (1) evil empire bent on dominating the minds of youths all over the world. 

The Good Dinosaur (Peter Sohn)

A boy and his 'saur

Pixar's The Good Dinosaur is arguably the studio's problem child--in 2009 announced for production, in 2013 director and producer replaced, in June 2015 nearly the entire cast replaced. The movie was released to fairly little fanfare, a few months after Pixar's major production had already been launched and declared a favorite by audience and critics alike (but not by me, alas). 

The picture opens with a joke: an elaborate sequence involving a giant rock being nudged like a billiard ball out of its (unrealistically crowded) asteroid belt, hurtling towards the Earth, flaring up from the heat of atmospheric passage--and whizzing past the planet by a few thousand miles. The sauropods look up and around, curious at what they might have missed. 

Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman); How To Train Your Dragon 2 (Dean Deblois)

(Warning: story and plot twists to be discussed in detail)

Rinse, repeat

Doug Liman's Edge of Tomorrow, an adaptation of  Hiroshi Sakurazaka's novel All You Need is Kill (far cooler title, in my opinion) has been described as Starship Troopers (1997) meets Groundhog Day (1993). I'd agree and go back a little further, to Algis Budrys' 1960 novel Rogue Moon, where a man is handpicked to negotiate an enigmatic alien artifact on the moon that kills humans in horribly excruciating ways; every time the protagonist dies, he is resurrected and can start again.

If you must ask: Budrys' novel is superior, of course--death here isn't an excuse to reset but a jarring, traumatic event that drives explorers insane. Daredevil adventurer Barker doesn't fear death (it's why he was picked), but does fear this artifact ("it didn't care! I was nothing to it!"); the novel itself (a slim 176 pages) is written in a dense prose, with internally twisted characters and a profound sense of mystery. Haven't read Hiroshi's novel but from what I've heard it's not as psychologically complex; Liman's adaptation goes further by simplifying and taking the dramatic sting out of Sakurazaka's novel--the hero has to make a choice but the usual kind, between his own life and mission success.

It's still entertaining, somewhat. Liman turns the looping effect into a running gag, and actor Tom Cruise (who plays an I presume Americanized version of the novel's Keiji/Cage) has the snap comic timing to negotiate the plot's fairly straightforward (as compared to Sakurazaka's or Budrys') twists. Sakurazaka reportedly based his aliens' design on the starfish (though why call them Mimics?); Liman's creatures are more like a cross between octopussies and cat o' nine tails, their tentacles whipping sand and water with unsettling speed. They're really best seen indirectly, when Liman plants them underground or underwater and you see the wake of their passing; in the open they mostly look like--what else?--CGI constructs of the Transformers variety, with consequent insubstantiality (in short: not very impressive). 

I mentioned Liman's lite version of Sakurazaka's ending; I'd also describe the movie as a lite-r version of the late Harold Ramis' masterpiece. Groundhog Day in my opinion isn't just brilliant comedy but a surprisingly supple metaphor for the intractability of life, and of one's own self when confronted with change. I've shown it to my students, a class of at-risk youths, and pointed out: "that's you--trapped in your own situation till you realize what you're doing to yourself and move on." It's what Neil Gaiman must think Hell is like, when he has Lucifer say: "They talk of me going around and buying souls, like a fishwife come market day, never stopping to ask themselves why.

"I need no souls.

"And how can anyone own a soul?

"No. They belong to themselves.

"They just hate to have to face up to it."

That's Groundhog Day--and, you might say, my workplace--in a nutshell. Any such metaphysical musing is lost here, in the hail of automatic gunfire. 

Flying circus


Dean Deblois' How to Train Your Dragon 2 is, yes, a sequel, and yes, an improvement over the original--bigger scope, more ambitious animation, an overall darker tone, with death definitely in the cards. Not a big fan of at least half the story (Why do animated movies Disney and otherwise always feature misunderstood kids or absent parents? Why do animated features assume their main characters should always have the family circumstance and emotional makeup of an upper middle-class suburban American teenager? Can't they think of something more interesting than recycling the same tired cliches?) but it does make an attempt at something halfway epic, the introduction of an alpha dragon, a supersized creature that can compel obedience from all other dragons.*

* wifi mind control? Idea's almost as silly as controlling a human being by tugging the follicles from his head.

Jay Baruchel's Hiccup still makes for an appealingly unlikely hero--a kind of sword-and-sorcery Woody Allen channeling Rube Goldberg (Hiccup's little Bondian gimmicks are I'd say the best running gag in the movie). The big dragons and their eventual faceoff feels a bit Godzilla--down to the blue light streaking up and down the spine (are today's summer movies  stealing images from each other?)--but the humor helps things slide down easier. The flying zips along, but doesn't have the sense of massive weight hurtling at speed that, paradoxically, I feel is necessary to believe in the thrill--and of course danger--of animated flight (think the climactic dogfight in Miyazaki's Porco Rosso). The movie expands and improves on so many fronts, but you're aware that this is still digital animation, the production still a summer entertainment aimed at kids.

Not repelled, not even insulted, just vaguely unsatisfied. Entertaining, but you feel it could have been so much more.

Pompeii (Paul W.S. Anderson)

Boiling point

American critics can't get enough of Paul William Scott (W.S., as opposed to the more prestigious Thomas) Anderson--or rather, can't muster enough disdain or sarcasm for Anderson's genre works, either science fiction or fantasy or an unholy combination of both. Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out New York sniffs: "The movie in your head melts ten times better;" Claudia Puig of USA Today cites a long litany of movies this steals from--Gladiator, Titanic, and Spartacus among others--and calls it "a generic saga with a cast of forgettable one-dimensional characters" (funny, that's my impression of USA Today)

Pompeii would be Anderson's rare foray into historical fiction--at least his first since The Three Musketeers; it's budgeted at a hefty $100 million and for now seems as doomed as the eponymous city, with a U.S. domestic opening weekend gross of a mere $10 million (by way of comparison, the mindnumbingly plastic--in every sense of the word--The Lego Movie raked in seven times as much over the same time period). 

Ms. Puig actually has a point; the screenplay looks to be a fusion of many, not just of Kubrick's Spartacus but Starz's inferior, far gorier mini-series remake. What she doesn't seem to get is that Anderson takes all these lesser pics and transforms them into a remarkably cohesive whole, an improvement over its constituent parts. Long wait before volcano erupts? Anderson regales you with a rise-through-the-ranks gladiator tale. Gladiator story too cliched? Anderson throws in a pair of forbidden lovers bonding over a wounded horse. Love story too cheesy? Anderson firms it up some with meat-and-potato gladiator fight sequences--and they are meat-and-potato sequences, gloriously old-fashioned in their concern for spatial coherence and visual flow (none of that Paul Greengrass/Christopher Nolan-style shaky-cam/ADHD editing for him). 

If Anderson has failed to improve on any one source, it's the Kubrick epic--but even there his ability to build low-key action with minimal blood (as opposed to the Starz version's ridiculous policy of spraying the screen with red every five minutes) and the occasional foray into inventive improvisation (I'm thinking of the way the very chains used to hobble the warriors become their most effective weapon) does more to honor Kubrick than almost anything I've seen this year, or the past several years. 

As Milo the gladiator Kit Harington is no Kirk Douglas but he does have a low-key, becoming modesty (I'm reminded of what the late poet-critic Jolico Cuadra once said: "I'm afraid of the quiet man"); as his main squeeze Emily Browning is no Jean Simmons but she does have a gawky beauty, with apple cheeks and knobby shoulders that remind one of a not-quite-grown swan (she was an enchanting sleeping beauty in Julia Leigh's interesting production)--together the two don't exactly strike sparks, but do generate a warm, magma glow. Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje plays Atticus, a proud but wary fellow combatant, as basically the Woody Strode character in Spartacus only more gregarious, with streaks of small-scale megalomania. Carrie Anne Moss does some nice understating, but is largely wasted in a supporting mother role (she could at least have donned leather thongs and swung a sword once or twice, for old times' sake). As lead bad guy Corvus, Keifer Sutherland is suitably hissable--physical enough that he wouldn't seem like a total pushover for the athletic-looking Harington, devious enough that you constantly want to yell at Milo to watch his back, maybe check his wallet.

The real star of the show of course is Mt. Vesuvius, and Anderson lovingly renders it in all its geologic glory, towering column of ash and projectile fireballs and all. Interestingly, the above photo of Sutherland peering down at a model of the local coliseum approximates the height and angle of many of Anderson's overhead shots, camera spinning like so many surveillance drones round the unruly volcano. R. Emmet Sweeney has some excellent observations about Anderson's overheads in Film Comment's blog--he notes that Anderson is all about models and representations in his pictures, and that Milo's debut in the Pompeii arena is a re-staging (call it a Roman attempt at digitally-rendered 3D) of Corvus' triumph over the Celts (where Corvus massacred Milo's parents), that the Red Queen's malevolent omniscience in the Resident Evil pictures has finally been trumped by the gods gazing down on Vesuvius, on its neighboring town, and on the antlike creatures scampering far below.

Anderson reportedly took six years to write and research the story and it shows; the overhead shots give us archeologically accurate images of town, geologically authentic images of the mountain, and even gives us a chronologically (if somewhat sped-up) correct timeline of the eruption, down to the (considerably exaggerated in size and violence) tsunami described by Pliny the Younger. Most people die not from the passage of fiery rocks in the sky, but from pyroclastic flows--sudden interruptions in the mountain's eruption where the giant ash column finds itself without heat or energy to drive it higher, and the whole thing collapses down the surrounding slopes--a miles-wide wall of shattered rock and superhot gases traveling nearly half the speed of sound, flash-frying anything in its way.

But that's the geogeek part of Anderson; he pretty much knows it's how this major volcanic event determines the destiny of the dewy young lovers that audiences will want to find out, and on this issue he pretty much pulls out all the stops; this is arguably his most impassioned, most heartfelt, most--let's face it--shamelessly corny work to date. 

(Skip this paragraph if you're planning to watch the film) And it works; least I think it works. The mountain rumbles in the background while we watch (from a near-Olympian vantage point) the two feel attraction for each other, stand up for each other, fight their way to one another. Then--Anderson, again pushing the god metaphor even further--Vesuvius rumblingly clears its throat, and announces with unquestionable authority the reorganization of priorities: from fleeing for their lives they're left with snatching a brief moment of bliss in the time left remaining  in their lives. Suddenly the lovers' youth and inexperience and callowness acquires a sharp poignancy, their affection an extra tang of sweet (bittersweet?); suddenly the movie's cheesiness feels just and not excessive, its plea for sympathy earned and not unwarranted, its sad stab at immortality more persuasive than you'd ever thought possible. Nothing like an erupting volcano to put everything in proper perspective--a goofy romance; a filmmaker condemned to eternal damnation for doing a series of profitable videogame film adaptations; even a movie doomed to obscurity, thanks to its storytelling integrity.

Resist if you want--it's your right after all--but if the sight of these two pretty young things embracing tightly in the face of near-certain doom isn't enough to move you...well, your heart may as well be made of volcanic rock.  Sic transit gloria mundi--Anderson has the effrontery to remind us of that, and to hell with the boxoffice.  

March 7, 2014

Gravity (Alfonso Cuaron)

What goes up

(WARNING: film's plot, narrative twists and ending discussed in close and explicit detail)

Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity comes with its own planet-sized hype: about the 17-minute opening shot, about the vertiginous sense of depth (enhanced by the 3D process), about the unprecedented scientific veracity.

The basic premise turns on a frightening demonstration of the Kessler Syndrome: the Russians have blown up a satellite and the resulting debris have pingponged their way across space towards the orbiting space shuttle in a rain of high-velocity scrap (it's a serious real-life problem and collisions between satellites have been recorded). Doctor Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) and Astronaut Matt Kowalski (George Clooney) are the only survivors and must make their way back to Earth using crippled equipment under adverse circumstances.

More interesting than the premise--or the actors, really--is Cuaron's attempt at telling the story in as dramatic and realistic a manner as possible. Much of the action happens in real time, in lengthy tracking shots; danger when it approaches is spotted quickly--what gives danger in space its unique quality is that you often can't do much about it even if you do see it, or know it's coming (the satellite debris that wreaks havoc on the shuttle will take ninety minutes to circle the globe and menace the shuttle again). Collisions are spectacular but--unsettlingly--occur in silence (well, not total silence; to Cuaron's credit he gives us muffled thuds, presumably conducted through umbilical lines, or through thick work gloves with a tenuous grip on an exterior rung).

For those interested Cuaron doesn't achieve complete realism: Stone would have done better to have the robot arm or Shuttle Remote Maneuvering System (SRMS) lower her (or she could have simply climbed down the arm's length) than to wait for Kowalski to rescue her with the infinitely slower Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU); the International Space Station and Hubble Telescope (and for that matter most communication satellites) are on widely differing orbits, the distances (not to mention velocities involved) impossible to cross using just the MMU; Stone initiates re-entry with a minimum of attitude adjustment (as in none), even if re-entry is actually a trickier and more dangerous process than what you see onscreen. Cuaron himself admits he sacrificed some accuracy for story purposes.

That isn't all Cuaron sacrifices: I'm guessing in its earlier incarnation the film was devoid of music, and Cuaron after a few less-than-positive test screenings was pressured to add a score--more an orchestrated hum, actually--to enhance drama and tension. Big mistake, I'd say; Stanley Kubrick in 2001 (still my idea of most accurate onscreen depiction of space) suggested the depths of space not just through miniatures posed against yards of black felt but through Kubrick's freakishly disciplined mis-en-scene and totalitarian control of details (including a leisurely editing rhythm and overall pace that evokes the sense of vast reaches being crossed): when Frank Poole is lost in space it takes David Bowman long minutes to rescue him--no music to shatter the expectant mood, no cheap hysterics to suggest desperation (at most Bowman's speech grows more clipped and annoyed). Cuaron cheats; there may not be any ambient sound in his version of space but the rather loud and mechanical score guarantees that there also won't be a lot of boredom experienced, especially by the ADHD crowd (a probably significant demographic). 

Richard Brody in the New Yorker points out a more serious flaw: the film has no inner life, not much apparent art mediating what the characters see and what the camera sees (actually between what has been digitally composed for the characters to see and what has been digitally composed for the camera to see); what point of view there is is revealed to be blandly heroic and competent. Good point (even if Brody erroneously (least I assume it's erroneous; he's always welcome to explain himself) suggests that Jupiter's massive gravity and not Kubrick's mysterious monolith triggered the mind-bending space trip in 2001), though you wonder at his attempt to connect the film to documentaries. 

Yes, the film is a shallow concept; it isn't meant to be anything more than shallow, and is hardly the first film to be so. Films about survival are a somewhat varied genre (recent examples off the top of my head: Danny Boyle's hyperbolic--and not in a good way--127 Hours; Kris Kentis' efficient Open Water; Robert Zemeckis' idiosyncratically humorous Cast Away) but Cuaron's picture has less in common with them (for one thing the protagonist--and why haven't more people thought of this?--is female) or with documentaries than with the kind of gimmicky projects filmmakers concocted to challenge themselves: Hitchcock's Lifeboat (movie set entirely in a lifeboat), Rope (movie apparently composed of a single unbroken shot), and (most effectively) Rear Window (movie set entirely in an apartment); Gus Van Sant's shot-by-shot remake of Psycho (I suppose I'm stretching now), which someone once described to me as "the ultimate film-school exercise."

I'd also call this film cousin (at least in spirit) to Howard Hawks' The Thing, where efficiency and smarts are the rule, the monster is merely a problem to be solved, and the only hint of inner life on display is the sexual challenge presented to bland Captain Hendrey by the surprisingly sexy (this is Antarctica after all, where after months in that frozen landscape even a husky would look appealing) Nikki Nicholson. Hendrey and his men hunt the creature with the methodical cool of professionals, the way Clooney's Kowalski proposes solutions to problems like a professional chess player--in space the biggest issue aren't events that inspire fear and anxiety, but clearing one's head of fear and anxiety: "focus," you could hear Kowalski lecturing Stone in so many words, "is all." Stone's one act of imagination is important solely for the coolly logical solution handed to her, a gift from beyond the grave; otherwise Cuaron could have snipped it from the picture. 

But then, Hawks might have cut the scene too. When Hendrey opens a door and finds The Thing standing there snarling he doesn't suddenly pause to debate the random nature of the universe, the poignant fragility of life and one's uncertain role in the flow of things; he shuts the door. Intellectual asides, Hendry must have thought, are literally beside the point here.

(Talking about asides--Gravity's finale, involving the fiery re-entry of thousands of shards of metal into Earth's atmosphere, features some of the most unpersuasive digitally-composed flames I've seen recently (not a high bar, there). To see a re-entry done properly try watching Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff--where, like Kubrick, Kaufman relies on old-fashioned on-camera tricks and pyrotechnics to achieve his effects) 

Hitchcock (and Hawks to a lesser extent) did have kinky stuff going on: in Lifeboat the smartest, sneakiest, most-likely-to-survive member on board is the innocent-looking Nazi; Rope's killers are motivated by Nietzschean concepts; Rear Window questions the morality of peeping, even if it does involve uncovering a possible murder. It's possible to argue that these elements are Hitchcock's true motives for making the films, that he had something weighty and worthwhile to tell the world; it's also possible to argue these are what he'd call MacGuffins, unimportant devices designed solely to get the plot going (remember that Hitchcock regretted the killing of a crucial character in Sabotage--but only because (or so he says) it repelled the audience with its wanton cruelty). Part of Hitchcock's appeal, I suspect--part of why he's such a fascinating conundrum that resists unraveling--comes from never really clarifying his own attitude on the subject. 

No, Cuaron's film doesn't offer much beyond what's there on the (admittedly well-made and exciting) surface (a subplot involving Dr. Stone and her daughter practically reeks of MacGuffinism), but I submit that sometimes surface is enough--that the visual challenge Cuaron set for himself is interesting enough. And if that affirmation doesn't satisfy you, ask Cuaron or (before him) Hitchcock, only don't expect a straight answer.

10.7.13

Iron Man 3 (Shane Black); The Great Gatsby (Baz Luhrmann)--re-edited

(Warning: plot twists and story developments discussed in close detail)

Stark raving

And the celebration continues with Iron Man 3, where billionaire industrialist (only in comic books--and by extension the movies--can this be considered a respectable appellation) Tony Stark has his toys taken away from him and he's reduced, so to speak, to playing with the cardboard box.

It's an interesting situation--a way of upping the drama for this second sequel, without upping the scale of conflict from the previous Marvel movie's worldwide alien-invasion menace. Stark's forced to think literally on his feet, to cope with an enemy that's the opposite of what he is--functioning ubermen who are at the same time walking time bombs. No super machines, just super biology.

Director Shane Black (who cowrote the script with TV writing and producing veteran Drew Pearce) almost manages to get away with it, only the fight sequences don't quite emphasize the qualitative difference between Stark's exoskeleton armor and people who are themselves living weapons (you'd think said living weapons would be more agile, or graceful, or adaptable). 

I do like the quick-repair ability, that seems to make sense: as these people are basically speeded-up metabolisms, their healing is also speeded up. The exothermic reaction is silly tho--where does that come from? And why is Stark's armor unable to deal with it (Surely a heat sink or thermal pump of some kind would be basic to his suit's design?)? 

(Gratuitous aside: surely Stark would do better taking his cue from Neil Gaiman's latest take on Cybermen (warning: plot details discussed))

Arguably the best image from the film is the sight of Stark dragging his armor--stolen I suspect from Django. Feel ambivalent watching that: on one hand Black is channeling a far superior action film (suffers in comparison, of course); on the other I've been here before. At least Black's theft is more emotionally resonant than Tarantino's (where's Foxx's coffin/armor on a leash?). 

That's about it for me. Black's a sometimes funny writer-filmmaker--his Kiss Kiss Bang Bang I remember (barely) to be a darkly comic amusement, and possibly the highlight of his career to date--but the action sequences both there and in this picture are your standard-issue shaky-cam footage, cut ADHD style: hardly coherent, much less comprehensible. The script comes up with half a dozen interesting premises--Stark without his toys, the mecha vs. bio thing, and so on--but fails to develop them in an interesting way. The Mandarin's soldiers (for example) are barely fleshed out, which is a real shame: theirs is the most interesting situation (what would a man think and feel and say, knowing he's doomed to explode at any moment? And what would motivate him to pledge his loyalty to the one who put him in this predicament in the first place?).

Then there's this article, which tries to make the case that this third installment is really a feminist tract in disguise. Must be one helluva disguise, because I don't see it: the Maya character is mostly a smart egg seduced and exploited by the real villain; Pepper is a largely annoying hostage who manages at the last minute to kick some butt. 

Whedon in comparison is more overtly for women's causes, has produced at least two TV series with women protagonists, and has consistently put strong women characters front and center in his work (in one film she's the single strongest character). The Wired article mentions The Avengers as failing some silly test, which is frankly nuts: Whedon wrote Black Widow as a major character, with her own (fairly complex) inner conflicts and motives, her own character arc, and her own kickass scene--all the more impressive for being sans superpowers, or (for the most part) digital effects.

...actually would love to have seen Maya reveal herself to be the real villain: someone from Stark's crowded bedroom past, who he betrayed or rejected and who's out for his bal--blood. Simpler, more elegant solution to a needlessly overcomplicated problem, based on the oldest conflict of all...

Maybe the movie's biggest failing: Stark running out of worthy adversaries, not just physical but verbal; as played by Robert Downey Jr. he's the quickest wit around and for most of the picture his only sparring equal is himself, which quickly gets tired. Guy Pearce, who can be villainous, is strangely unthreatening here; would love to see Ben Kingsley take a crack, but of course Black quickly tosses that possibility out the picture window (I incidentally guessed the Mandarin's true nature twenty minutes in--Kingsley pops up again and again and not once speaks an unscripted line?--which doesn't speak much for the twistedness of Black's plot). In Whedon's The Avengers (which I wrote about at length) Stark has to deal with a Norse god, an earthbound titan (who doubles as the only brain able to keep up with him), a one-eyed badass--there's no end of inflated egos to bounce off against and that (not the largely digitized action) is what made the movie interesting.

Maybe the movie's even bigger failing (this and every other recent comic-book franchise): its inability to create a distinct look for the film, a stylized, parallel world where superheroes can convincingly exist--or a stylized enough world to at least hold our attention, maybe even fire our imagination (Tim Burton managed with his Batman films, Guillermo del Toro with his Hellboy series and--further back--Robert Altman with Popeye and Mario Bava with Diabolik!). Maybe what's needed isn't a recalibrated script, or better cast of actors, or more on-camera special effects; maybe what's needed is a filmmaker with a vision, and the talent to properly realize it. 

So--what? Not a lot of kiss-kiss, mainly digitized bang-bangs, and an outsized admittedly talented star, standing alone on the big stage. Yes, he is Iron Man. The real question is: why on Earth should we care?

Grate Gatsby

First thing you hear from naysayers is: "I can't stand the hip-hop." Lovers of the picture ask that people be more open-minded, that they realize jazz was the hip-hop of its day, as shocking an affront to American ears with perhaps (since plenty of the great jazz singers and performers were black) the same undercurrent of racist indignation.

I get it; I can take the anachronism and move on, I see where rap is meant to dynamite one's complacency and allow the introduction of an unwelcome idea or two (though I'd reply that there are a few lesser-known, period-appropriate jazz and classical pieces that could serve just as well, and using "Rhapsody in Blue" to announce Gatsby is about the laziest choice for introductory song I can possibly imagine). 

What I can't take--what makes Lurhman's Gatsby the visual equivalent of a cheese grater applied to the knee--is how loud Luhrmann's movie is, in every sense of the word. How it shrieks out plot points in advance, heavily underlines them, highlights them several times over with a screaming bright-pink marker, and--for good measure--floats the relevant text in man-high letters across the big screen. 

...not an enemy of voiceover narration per se, far from it--Bresson and later Scorsese have shown us how it can be properly done--but Luhrmann in his self-declared respect for the novel uses Fitzgerald's prose extensively to the point where it functions as a crutch, telegraphing what should have been subtleties: the moment, say, when Daisy tells Gatsby that she loves him without directly saying so, right under her husband's nose; or the moment when Daisy decides to betray Gatsby (for the former Luhrmann uses Cliff Notes excerpts from the book; for the latter DiCaprio is asked to do an Al Pacino-style freakout, and then Luhrmann uses Cliff Notes excerpts). 

The famed blinking green light at the end of the pier--so neatly introduced in the book as an enigmatic signal from across the bay--comes across here more like a Close Encounter of the Third Kind, with the camera swooping close enough to make First Contact. When Myrtle is hit by a car she flies across the air, flashing her pantied crotch at the giant Dr. T.J. Eckleburg's baleful, bespectacled gaze ("Oh, you impudent tart!" you imagine him whispering with delighted outrage). 

The parties are overscaled carnivals with Gatsby as reclusive ringmaster (giving some bite to Tom Buchanan's quip that Gatsby drives a "circus wagon") but the real glory of Fitzgerald are the dinner and party conversations, the way the talk seems to pingpong in different directions yet somehow converge with eerie precision (like filings in a faint magnetic field) into a grand design, an insignia of the decadent '20s--on presenting this aspect the movie is an absolute failure, with barely the patience to sit still enough for one verbal exchange to register, much less a gaggle of em. 

Does Fitzgerald write about vulgar excess? Yes, but there's nothing vulgar or excessive about his prose: he suggests where others might explicitly state, omits where others might indulge (in this he shares something with fellow contemporary Ernest Hemingway: an unstated lust for simplicity, an equally covert fascination with the unwholesome). One wonders what antics occurred in the other rooms of Gatsby's mansion that Nick failed to visit, or what enterprise Gatsby is involved in that even common acquaintance Walter Chase (confessing to Tom) is "afraid to tell me about." Fitzgerald leaves details of Gatsby's wealth and criminal activities to dissolve into the dark and distance, allowing our imagination to take over; the result is bigger than the book itself, an outsized portrait of a self-made man--one of the most memorable in American literature.

Luhrmann's problem is he can't do elegant to save his life--he dives right in and luxuriates like a pig in a cesspool (apologies to all pigs; all cesspools too). This is American literature as reimagined by Michael Bay only, I suspect, worse--at least Bay doesn't aspire to art, is upfront about doing it for the money.  

Luhrmann presents the eponymous man as unabashed romantic hero, for the most part ignoring signs and indications in Fitzgerald's novel that Gatsby may also have been a naive fool. Or rather, the signs are present (Luhrmann is that faithful to the text) but the preponderance of evidence--from "Rhapsody in Blue" to DiCaprio's intense line readings to the heart-on-sleeve music--urges us to root for Gatsby because (gag) He Is Us.

DiCaprio's mouth struggles to push the mush of an upper class New England accent past his lips (he gives the impression of having hired a diction coach only weeks before); he has the guarded eyes and studiedly relaxed pose of an infiltrating outsider, a deep-penetration agent high on overconfidence and desperate bluff, only a step ahead of exposure (is this really Fitzgerald's Gatsby? I don't know; I just know it's compulsively watchable). Carey Mulligan is anxious in a different way: she seems seems timid, out of her depth in dealing with her character--and rightly so, as Daisy is The Love of Gatsby's Life, and she's not up (as she herself exasperatedly informs him) to the demands of the role.

Luhrmann ends Gatsby's life with a shot stolen from the opening of Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard, then glosses over the father's visit--the little reveals from Gatsby's childhood and past that help clarify (or complicate) his character--to go straight for the tragic-heroic funeral (all that's missing really are a drifting Viking boat in flames and perhaps an erupting volcano, neither of which are in the book and neither of which, surprisingly, Luhrmann is able to cram into his Dagwood Sandwich movie). He does the ending in a straightforward manner, or as straightforward as anything he's ever done: Nick Carraway (a largely disheveled Toby Maguire, channeling Fitzgerald by way of William Faulkner) solemnly intones the closing lines ("So we beat on, boats against the current...") while the words flash like digital displays against dark water. Not for Luhrmann the simplicity of John Huston's masterful adaptation of James Joyce's great short story The Dead, where Joyce's words are spoken quietly against a snowblown darkness--Luhrmann, apparently, has no confidence in the magic of Fitzgerald's words, no confidence in his own ability to depict that magic on the big screen. He simply must have his digital. 

Who could have done a valid take on Gatsby? Robert Altman's overlapping dialogue I submit would have been perfect for the parties. Bob Fosse directed a lurid '20s crime melodrama on the theater stage (Chicago), dealt with the death throes of the period on the big screen (Cabaret). 

Max Ophuls has done Hollywood films, has done films depicting elaborate parties, has done period pictures portraying the upper classes, has tied them all together with gorgeously sinuous long-take tracking shots. Orson Welles entered films by way of radio--you hear it in the way his characters' dialogue overlap, how it's overheard before the start of one scene, spills like champagne into the next; you hear it in the music and sound effects that bridge his sequences, the aural transitions that whip his film into higher velocities. Gatsby might have been filmed in the manner of The Magnificent Ambersons only with a less gracious upper class, the conversation nevertheless glittering like a crystal chandelier.

Anyone alive? Woody Allen, if he could be persuaded to do someone else's material, might inject a welcome dose of comedy (Gatsby for all its gaiety lacks a sense of humor). Alan Rudolph has visited the period a few times (The Moderns; Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle); Michael Apted did a lovely little thriller once (Agatha).

David Fincher doesn't flinch from period work (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button); neither does Brian De Palma (The Untouchables). Both have a gliding camera style that (like Ophuls') allows Fitzgerald's characters to talk to each other properly (their defining characteristic). And if you want some really offbeat young Turk to do the honors, I hear Mulligan has Nicolas Winding Refn's number on speed dial.

Meantime you have this, and this to put it mildly stinks. Jack Clayton's 1974 version (with Robert Redford as Gatsby and Mia Farrow as Daisy) may have choked on its own good taste; Luhrmann goes the other extreme, shoving his arm so far up his ass he could grab hold of his tongue and pull himself inside out. Don't know which is the greater horror, don't much care; I'm just waiting (possibly forever) for a proper adaptation of the novel.

5.11.13  

Crash of a Titan--a kind of tribute to Ray Harryhausen

Harryhausen's big guy, meeting his blind date for the first time

First, there's this sad news.

Then, there's this, one of my older articles comparing one of Harryhausen's lesser works with the more expensive digital remake. Just to remind us what we've lost, and how good he can be.

Let the bloodletting begin.

Crap of the Titans

You'd think they'd get one thing right; you'd think they could take a so-so movie, Ray Harryhausen's 1981 valedictory opus Clash of the Titans (Desmond Davies is the director on record, but let's not kid ourselves--this is Harryhausen's baby all the way) and make a halfway decent picture out of it. Walking out of Louis Leterrier's 2010 remake, though, all I could think was: “I miss Harryhausen.”

By no stretch of imagination was the original good, much less great--Harry Hamlin looked ridiculous in sandals and miniskirt, and the chemistry between him and starlet Judi Bowker was so underwhelming you kept looking sideways for the Marx Brothers to leap in and save the show. I remember Ursula Andress and Claire Bloom (beautiful actresses, both) being stiff as Greek statues; I remember thinking the mechanical owl was so blatant a rip-off of Artoo Deetoo that George Lucas ought to sue (and later--when Artoo took to the air in ridiculously tiny rockets--wondering if maybe it was the other party that ought to sue).

But, strange to say, the years have been kind to this Titans. Laurence Olivier's Zeus--who was so salty you could fry him in a pan, add coffee, and come up with red-eye gravy--goosed the picture to life whenever he was onscreen. Olivier has his 'thespic' moments--even in a production where he's obviously there for the paycheck he never simply phones in the performance--he's constantly on and ebullient and chewing with much gusto on the badly designed scenery.

Then there are the creatures. Bubo has, finally, become charming (while Artoo through the years has become mean-spirited and annoying); the monstrous Calibo (Neil McCarthy) achieves a sort of tragic stature; Medusa slithers with gravid grace, and has a suitably evil glare; the Kraken, unmistakably modeled after the alien Ymir in Harryhausen's 1957 20 Million Miles to Earth, possesses a grandeur that gets grander every time I see him again (he looks as if he had swallowed an umbrella that had snapped open).

And that, for all the stillborn drama and cheesiness of the overall production, is what I remember about the movie--its considerable flaws now forgivable, its virtues considerable. I suppose what John Huston as Noah Cross once said still applies: “Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.” Harryhausen's Titans is an old building whose time has apparently come.

Keith Phipps of the Onion A.V. Club wrote of the Leterrier remake: “If Clash were a meal, it would come in a paper bag and have some grease stains near the bottom.” I disagree; I don't think Mr. Phipps appreciates the virtues of a greasy burger, the fulsome flavor of properly charred meat on toasted buns, the juices (red from a medium-rare patty) oozing thickly out the sides and staining one corner of the bag. Harryhausen's Titans is a bar burger, a diner's special, a one-of-a-kind creation that's too fatty to be good for you, but makes for a satisfying snack; what Mr. Phipps must be thinking of is a McDonald's Happy Meal, which to my recollection has never stained the corner of anything--it's too dense and flavorless and dried out, as Morgan Spurlock once put it, for any self-respecting bacteria to touch.

Yes, Leterrier uses the latest in CGI techniques, and yes both Medusa and Kraken move smoother than before--the Medusa skittering over rocks like a frightened gecko, the Kraken lifting his head (and for a while there you think he's nothing but head) out of the ocean, then baring an impressive set of ginzu knives. But Harryhausen's creatures for all their clunkiness had personality--the Medusa dragged her serpentine body painfully across the rocks, and her face held this look of aggrieved fury partly because, you think, she'd been thusly accursed (she almost didn't need that green glow of power emanating from her eyes, the expression was arresting enough). Leterrier's Medusa is a babe with snake hair, and the way she would slither here and there you wonder--why does she kill? If I had that much mobility I'd take a month off and backpack through the Amazon jungle, maybe visit Machu Picchu.

Then there's the Kraken (which, by the way, is Scandinavian, not Greek at all--I can understand the creature vacationing at the Greek Isles to get a tan, but why this sideline involving virgins?). The Leterrier Kraken is an animal (a rather tasty-looking one at that; give me a lemon wedge and tartar sauce and I'm all over that creature), and presumably looks at Andromeda (Alexa Davalos, who to her credit actually manages to look more interested in her eventual fate than Bowker) strictly as food. Harryhausen's Kraken has the whiskers of an old man, the leer of a lecher, and tentacles to match; when he climbs out of the sea, you don't know exactly what will happen--dinner, or the most hideously outsized date rape in recorded history?

And that's pretty much it except I might add that Liam Neeson, who plays Zeus, says the line “Release the Kraken!” as if he was hoping the command would slip by without anyone bothering to obey; fact of the matter is, he looks like he'd rather let the entire movie slip by without anyone bothering to notice he was there...on the whole, he'd rather be somewhere else altogether. 

Now why bother showing up to collect a paycheck if you can't get some kind of satisfaction out of said paycheck? Olivier knew better: if the picture was going to stink (his was like day-old fish; the remake was more like week-old fish (okay, I'm being unfair to week-old fish)) then he was going to, if not save it, at least derive some kind of pleasure from it. He was going to have fun, Zeus damn it, and he'll give his equivalent line of dialogue a snap and roll and punch that Neeson would have been wise to emulate (“LET LOOSE THE KRAKKEN!!”). Not exactly great acting, but definitely great hamming.

First published in Businessworld 4.8.10

The Avengers (Joss Whedon, 2012)

Hero worship

Joss Whedon's The Avengers (2012) is a pretty good comic-book movie. 

How good? Let me put it this way: it's smarter than Zack Snyder's Watchmen (which unintentionally parodied--not to mention trashed--the more unsettling aspects of Alan Moore's book), more entertaining than Bryan Singer's Superman Returns (which spent too much time on melodrama, and limp melodrama at that), wittier and more varied than any of Nolan's Batman movies (Whedon's better at directing action, too), more moving than Robert Rodriguez's Sin City (okay, not saying much there).

It's a satisfying conclusion to what has been a lackluster string of Marvel movies--an indifferently directed Thor (Kenneth Branagh despite his Shakespearean chops couldn't bring his digital Asgard to life), a so-so Captain America  (Joe Johnston couldn't quite capture Jack Kirby's magic--the only reason to be interested in this square-jawed, straight-shooting hero), a passable Iron Man (passable only because Robert Downey Jr. could make even a metal armor suit amusing), a disappointingly dumbed-down Hulk (much prefer the more psychologically bizarre Ang Lee version--possibly the only Lee movie I actually like).

Titanic (James Cameron, 1997)

The Love Boat 

No doubt about it: at a rumored budget of $250 million, with whispered stories of a long, difficult shoot; then a triumphant film opening in Japan, and huge boxoffice takings thereafter (not to mention Best Picture Oscar buzz)—Titanic has got to be, right here, right now, The Greatest Show On Earth (Last year's Greatest Show On Earth, the death & funeral of Princess Diana, has already lost its fizz). 

Beauty and the Beast (Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise, 1991)

Beauty is a beast

Noel Vera

(What if the knights of Guy de Loimbard went to see Disney's 3D version of Beauty and the Beast?)

“Sh--the movie, she is starting.”

“What is the title again?”
 

“I told you already--Beauty and the Beast--La Belle et la bete.”

“But but--this is in color! This is not Jean Cocteau!”

“We are in a 3-D multiplex, not an art house theatre. One does not ask for canard à la rouennaise in McDonald's.”

“What is that onscreen? A cathedral window?”

“It is stained glass--they are trying to tell the story of the prince.”

“They are boring me to death.”

“They are attempting a Gothic look, with colors a la Notre Dame.”

“I have seen better color on a comic book--Jean Giraud, Georges Remi. What is happening now?”

“That is Belle.”

“But--she is singing! I do not remember Josette Day singing in the film!”

“I have told you, this is not Cocteau, this is a Disney film.”

“What is that? A singing suppository?”

“That is a candle. He is named Lumiere. He is voiced by Jerry Orbach.”

“He has a very pleasant voice...but why would a suppository sing?”

“He is not a suppository, he is a candle.”

“I remember Cocteau's chandeliers--they were lovely and not a little frightening.”

“I know.”

“I do not think I can be frightened by a singing suppository.”

“I imagine it would depend on what it is singing.”

“Is that chamberpot singing?”

“That is a teapot.”

“Then why does it look like a chamberpot?”

“That is a teapot.”

“Yes, and you told me earlier the suppository is a candle.”

“It is a candle, you idiot!”

“Who are you calling an idiot? You thought that chamberpot served tea.”

“Will you please be quiet?”
 

“I would like to see you sip from that cup.”

“Quiet!”

“You will need more than a lump of sugar to sweeten that brew, monsieur.”

“Sh!”

“Why do they sing so much?”

“I think they are supposed to be enchanted.”

“They sound as if they had suppositories stuck up their--”

“Sh!”

“Cocteau's film, now that is enchantment. He did not need color, he did not need any damn singing, he used just simple magician's tricks onscreen so there is no cheating--”

“Sh!”

“This movie, it tries too hard. Cocteau was a lazy bastard and had no money because he made his film just after the war, but he was smart enough to figure out how to do things on-camera simply and on the cheap--”

“Sh!”

“Why is that camera swooping when they dance? What is this with the camera swoop--does it enhance the dancing any? Did the cameraman transform into a chimpanzee and start swinging from the chandeliers?”

“Will you please be quiet?”

“This is La Belle et la bete, no? This is not La Planète des singes.”

“I assure you, I cannot answer for the cameraman.”

“Who is that?”

“That is Gaston, Belle's fiance and the beast's rival.”

“He is funny, a little. If I were her, I would forget that bore of a beast and choose him, instead.”

“He is okay.”

“The beast here is so dreary and sullen, a lump of lifeless fur. At least Jean Marais as the beast in Cocteau's film was magnifique. Even Greta Garbo thought so.”

“I think so.”

“Marais was dressed and made up like a princely medieval Minotaur, with coiffed hair and beard. He was fabulous, a figure from out of The Arabian Nights visiting a story in The Decameron. Half man, half beast; half real, half myth.”

“How poetic.”

“'Give me back my beast!' Garbo said. She did not care for Jean Marais' real face at all.”

“Neither do I.”

“Even if Marais was stunning in real life.”

“I know.”

“They can keep this beastly bore that resembles a castrated bison. Gaston, he at least knows what he wants (the girl) and is amusing. Or give me Cocteau's beast and they can keep all the rest.”

“Certainly.”

“Give me back my beast!”

“Sh!”

“Why are the townfolk carrying torches?”

“I do not know.”

“Do they intend to eat the beast?”

“I do not think so.”

“I think so. All those torches--it looks as if they plan to roast him.”

“I don't know--”

“They are such idiots. Everyone knows that bison is most tender when braised.”

“Yes, but please--”

“Boeuf bourguignon--beef braised in burgundy, with mushrooms and root vegetables, perhaps some boiled potatoes, or butter noodles...”

“You are making me hungry.”

“I am already hungry, just looking at that two-legged beefsteak.”

“Sh.”

“'Braise the beef!'”

“Sh!”

“I am just singing along with the people onscreen--”

“Will you be quiet?”

“Did Gaston just fall from a great height?”

“Please be quiet!”

“Why do Disney villains always fall from a great height? It is as if the filmmakers do not want to give the hero the responsibility of kicking his arse.”

“Sh!”

“They would rather drop him out of sight. How convenient.”

“Sh!”

“So...want to know what I think of the movie?”

“You have not stopped telling me what you think of the movie.”

“You have not stopped shushing me.”

“Because you have not stopped talking, you hind leg of a quadriplegic.”

“Who are you to talk to me like that, you waver at others' faces of laughably small charcuterie? In 3-D, no less.”

“Savor the scent from my armpits.”

“Suck the brie from between my toes, you canted connoisseur.”

“May you have an accident in the shape of an umbrella.”

“May your testicles be tenderized by a fifty-pound mallet.”

“May you sit on a broomstick.”

“So did you like the movie?”

“Well--no.”

“You did not like the songs?”

“They loosened the wax in my ears.”

“But the animation? Did you not find it colorful and amusing?”

“Like the daubings in a toilet stall.”

“Not even in 3-D?”

“Aggravated my astigmatism.”

“Then we have no quarrel?”

“Not with each other.”

“Shall we, then?”

“Why not?”

“Fetchez la vache!”

(With apologies to Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones, Eric Idle, Graham Chapman, Michael Palin, John Cleese)

First published in Businessworld 2.23.12