Avengers: Age of Ultron (Joss Whedon, 2015)

Frankenstein upgrade

Call me seduced by expensive corporate product, but I liked Joss Whedon's Avengers: Age of Ultron. Forget that it costs an estimated quarter of a billion (all that money and not even a glimpse of decent shawarma!); forget that it ties up and partly resolves the plotlines of a TV show and three smaller franchises, setting up at the same time the premise for the next two direct sequels and sequels for aforementioned franchises; forget that it features the latest in (largely unpersuasive) digital effects and (somewhat poorly staged) 3D filmmaking--I went because, well, it's Whedon's latest. Watched mainly for the quips and the dialogue, folks, and his deft way with oddly idealistic drama, just like the previous picture. 

The Butler (Lee Daniels); Fruitvale Station (Ryan Coogler); Much Ado About Nothing (Joss Whedon)

The butler didn't do it

Lee Daniel's The Butler (director's name included reportedly for copyright reasons) really should read: Lee Daniel's Forrest Gump. We get a similarly hapless, helpless hero bouncing his passive way through recent American history, though Daniels does refrain from digitally inserting his protagonist in every famous archival footage in recent memory--at least we're spared that travesty. 

I'm guessing though what Daniel's really striving for with this story of Cecil Gaines (Forrest Whitaker), the White House butler who served seven presidents (based loosely--very loosely--on the story of Eugene Allen), would be popular audience response to Gump's feel-good version of history (we experience in swift succeeding order institutional oppression; physical, mental suffering; decades of bad prosthetic age makeup; and ultimately and eventually vindication, triumph) combined with the kind of respectful accolade granted to filmmaker James Ivory and novelist Kazuo Ishiguro for their film Remains of the Day, about yet another butler (Anthony Hopkins) serving in the cusp of history. Not an easy task, though--Ivory directs with an aesthetic severity that sucks all the pathos out of the material; you actually find yourself gasping for air in the film's hermetically sealed screen space (my favorite of Ivory's works, possibly) while Hopkin's unceasingly smiling butler stand invisible and invincible in one corner. 

Daniels doesn't suffer any severity, except perhaps the ADHD kind: his movie makes Robert Zemeckis' picaresque romp through the decades look positively Japanese with subtlety and restraint. There isn't a dramatic confrontation or emotional breakdown or historic occasion he can't shove in your face and up your nose with his ten-ton touch; this is coercive emotional porn of the worst sort, shameless propaganda shrieked out from the rooftops on the remote chance that perhaps you didn't get the message. I found myself hiding behind the seat before me, trying to avoid the sheer obviousness of it all (case in point: the picture's final death is telegraphed at least minutes before it actually occurs, causing me to exclaim: "Can't believe he's going to do it--oh, he did it!").

A shame, because there are some honestly powerful moments to be found here. Daniels builds some surprisingly potent comic-horrific contrapuntal rhythms from the sequence where Gaines' rebellious son (David Oyelowo) insists on keeping his chair at a whites-only lunch counter while Gaines seats honored guests at the White House dining room; later Daniels intercuts between Gaines listening to Nixon talking about undermining the Black Panthers and Gaines' son listening to the Panthers speak similarly brutal language. In moments like these Daniels makes a cogent point: that estranged father and son aren't so far apart in their struggles and aspirations as they would like to think they are.

Whitaker does plenty with an indrawn breath or a slightly lifted brow--but he isn't working with a screenplay from an Ishiguro novel, nor does he enjoy the deft guidance of a James Ivory (at one point Gaines actually quotes a line, not from the Ivory film but from an interview about the film, where Hopkins summarized his character with the observation that ideally a room should feel emptier when the butler is present; Hopkins actually makes you feel that vacuum while Whitaker with no small help from Daniels fails--possible because the feat requires subtlety). Whitaker's role (heroic restraint in the face of dramatic circumstances) also bears striking resemblance to Cherry Pie Picache's emotionally wounded-up surrogate mother in Brillante Mendoza's Foster Child--only Mendoza doesn't provide dramatic catharsis and spiritual uplift at the end of his film. 

What Daniels has done (or failed to do) can't help but make me better appreciate Eddie Romero's achievement in his Ganito Kami Noon, Paano Kayo Ngayon (The Way We Were Then, The Way We Are Now, 1976)--yet another hapless Gump figure traipsing his way through history, only with tongue pressed firmly in cheek. Comedy solves a lot of problems in historical chronicles--you are forgiven the unlikeliest coincidences, you're excused from maintaining a wearying fidelity to realism, the same time comedy is constantly analytical; it tends to take an issue apart and hold it up for close examination, and properly used it can still develop an emotional wallop. The Butler could have used a bit more analysis, a lot less  catharsis; at the very least Daniels could have used more comedy to cut through all the cheese he poured over his huge steaming pile of nachos. 

Coming home

The impact of Ryan Coogler's intensely felt Fruitvale Station is belied by the relative innocuousness of the title: unless you know about or heard of what happened you'd be thinking the film is some kind of documentary on San Francisco's mass transit system.

It's some kind of document all right: the final twenty-four hours of Oscar Grant III, a young black man arrested and shot to death (accidentally, not-so-accidentally) by transit police on New Years' Day, 2009.

I've no large issues with the film's ending--far as I can see it's a powerful piece of filmmaking, apparently well researched and for the most part accurate. I like it that the more overtly brutish and possibly racist of the transit officers (Kevin Durand) isn't the one who fires the fatal shot; that it isn't quite made clear--or at least Coogler manages to recreate the confusion at the time--whether or not Grant's hands were handcuffed at the time, or if (as the officers claimed) he was really reaching for his waistband in an apparent attempt to draw a gun (he was unarmed). I think Coogler with the less-than-coherent imagery and editing is trying to make a larger, more powerful point: that a black man's existence is in such a state of ferment and turmoil his life can be cut short at any time, just like that.

Coogler makes a similar point earlier, in a subtler manner: Grant and his friends board the fateful train which pulls away; the camera stays put and as the train blurs into motion the passengers inside become shimmery and ghostlike, almost as if they threaten to flicker completely out of existence. Lovely, memorable effect.

More troubling I suppose is his recreation of the earlier part of Grant's day. Coogler doesn't hide the fact that Grant is a repeat criminal offender, that he has used drugs in the past and is still using, and that he's less than faithful to his girlfriend. On the other hand he plants little hints here and there that tend to mitigate these character flaws--to cite three: he loves dogs, he's seriously thinking of quitting drugs, and if he flirts with a pretty girl it's mainly to help her out at work.


The first hint is the most problematic; the entire incident did happen--but to Coogler's brother, not Grant; Coogler admits to trying to establish a metaphor, that Grant is like that pit bull, a basically goodhearted creature with an unhappy reputation. The second (giving up drugs) was apparently discussed by Grant with his mother and girlfriend--though no one actually saw him go so far as to throw away an expensive bag of grass.

Can't help but liking the third little detail--for a while there you're not sure if Grant is being helpful or trying to pick up the girl, and the actor Michael B. Jordan plays up this ambiguity beautifully; also, this is one of the few details that seems to have some basis in fact, as the grandmother did say he called her asking for her fish recipe.

Think Coogler weakens his film when he tries to mitigate his protagonist's many flaws, when he tries to both present the flaws and defend his protagonist however indirectly from the uglier implications of those flaws. Coogler misses the more difficult but possibly more rewarding argument: that no matter what faults Grant may have (and even if every accusation leveled at him were true he'd hardly be the worst person aboard that train) he didn't deserve to be shot in the back, lying on his belly on the floor of that station.

Still it's a harrowing experience, and call Coogler irresponsible for picking the aftermath of the Treyvon Martin case to release his picture, I'm willing to admit the film articulates something, a frustration we feel on the issue of race in America: we may have come a long way, but have an even longer way to go. 
 

Much to-do

Joss Whedon's adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing is pretty much what you'd expect--sexy fun--but I didn't expect it to be so much of a piece with the rest of Whedon's work. Smart and attractive people dealing out wit in intricately woven, kilometric lines? That's so--Buffy. Or Firefly.

Not saying Whedon's managed to pull Shakespeare down to the level of television (well-made television); time and time again he's borrowed characters, situations, ideas from The Bard--he's just taken a major source of inspiration and brought it to the big screen. Plus he goes on to demonstrate how unintimidating Shakespearean English can be, if you've got a cast of actors confident enough and deft enough to wrap their lips around all that archaic (yet still playable after all these centuries, still of-the-moment pertinent) dialogue such that the meaning is not only clear, but the actors clearly had fun speaking them.

Helps that much of the film is casually--even carelessly--shot and cut together, giving the very opposite impression of a formal Shakespeare drama; Whedon has things hopping and we're put on alert trying to keep up with his lively sense of pace. 

If Much Ado feels so Whedonesque, the grounds on which the play is performed--Whedon's own house--feel so, well, Italian, or at least Santa Monica California doing its level best to be Italian (the play is officially set in Messina, Sicily). This along with (as Whedon himself notes) the film's extensive use of window panes, glass, reflections, candlelight, sunlight and shadow play on classically Shakespearean themes like deception and truth, of something or someone or someplace pretending to be what she, he or it is not, from that pretense forging a new truth--or at least a more persuasive lie.

There's a bright side (Benedick (Alexis Denisof) and Beatrice's (Amy Akers) belligerence hiding a budding affection for each other) and dark side (Claudio's (Fran Kranz) festering distrust of Hero (Jillian Morgese, in her debut role), fanned by the machinations of Don John (Sean Maher)). Matters come out right in the end (this is a comedy after all), but Whedon doesn't stint on the more pessimistic implications of the play, as mistrust and misogyny wrap their tentacles around Hero's helpless form to the point that even her own father Leonato (Clark Gregg, in arguably the finest, most understated performance here) accepts the calumny directed against his daughter with heartchilling speed, and the only ally she can reach out to is her friend and confidante (and fellow woman) Beatrice. People in distress act instinctively, and Hero's instincts have her choose along gender lines--that's how it is, the play seems to say, though it also makes you wonder: why should this be so? Why do women more easily trust women, why do men put much more faith in men, and should Hero continue loving a man who has demonstrated so little of both?

Hero and Claudio's relationship produces much of the play's drama; Benedick and Beatrice's churns up much of the comedy--but also much of the warmth, as theirs is the older story with more than a bit of history, and not just in the play. Whedon fans recognize the actors playing Benedick and Beatrice as the famously star-crossed lovers in his series Angel and call it cheap fan service, but watching them consummate that tragically brief romance in this modestly scaled, sloppily shaped Shakespearean comedy is like having a little ribboned gift presented for our delight. Ackers and Denisof aren't just a pair of pretty faces: you can tell they're totally comfortable with each other, and the developing fondness on their faces isn't just skilled emoting, it's genuinely felt. Wonderful fun.

8.19.13

Resident Evil: Retribution; Beast of the Southern Wild; Body Heat

Poetry of the senses

Was looking over Lawrence Kasdan's memorable '81 feature debut and it looks nice enough, all shadows and subdued colors and slinking camera, and he does evoke the moist heat adequately--caught myself wiping my brow from time to time and wishing for some ass tea. 

Cabin in the Woods (Drew Goddard, 2011)

Five characters in search of a killer

Five friends drive into a forest; among the trees stands a little house.

You could almost see where this is going--cue shadowy outline of twisted figures shambling through forest's edge, dragging heavy rusted implements behind them--only that's not where the film was going, not initially; initially we have two men (Peter Jenkins and Bradley Whitford) driving an electric cart down a long hallway, sipping their coffee mugs and talking morning-office chat. Suddenly the words “CABIN IN THE WOODS” in huge block red letters drop down on the screen with a huge crash, and just as quickly vanish.

In the audiences I've sat with the moment almost always gets a big “Huh?” One companion whispered to me “hope the rest isn't going to be as cheesy as that.” I remember someone behind me muttering “Worst movie ever.”

Then the story proper starts (Camera crane swooping from ground to second floor, catching Kristen Connolly at her apartment window, in underwear), and everyone quiets down--nothing like a beautiful girl in panties to capture one's attention. We meet in succeeding order the Virgin, her friend the Slut, her boyfriend the Jock, his friend the Nerd; the Clown (Fran Kranz, channeling a spacier version of his Topher character in Whedon's Dollhouse) arrives last, wielding a three-foot long bong that collapses into a coffee mug with snap-on handle (Where can you get one? I want one). From their chit-chat we learn they are planning a road trip, to a remote homestead in some far-off wilderness.

So far so familiar...only a man in black wearing an earphone has been monitoring their conversation, and the film keeps cutting back to the two men seen earlier on their electric cart, now walking up to a highly secured control room, with surveillance cameras that look into...the five youths' cabin in the woods.

Welcome to Joss Whedon's latest brainchild, his answer to the question “whither now, horrorshow?” In his opinion (an opinion I happen to share), the horror movie is all tapped out; horror nowadays is mostly half-naked teenagers being pinned down and violated and tortured repeatedly, endlessly, the only variation involving the method of torment and means of death.

Pizza-making, says I. Horror in movies, at least in the better examples, has traditionally been the art of transferring one's fears from the screen into one's head (where they can fester all night, developing all kinds of interesting flavors) with as little effort as possible, showing us as little of the process as possible, letting the audiences' collectively shivering minds do most of the work for us. Alfred Hitchcock was a master; so to a less prolific extent was Roman Polanski. The list of other masters is not a long one.

Nowadays the 'art' has devolved into mere pizza-making--basically using one's production budget to create as many and as diverse a number of pizza toppings as possible (pepperoni, Italian sausage, ham, bacon, chopped vegetables, pineapple, anchovies) to scatter on and around your fake corpse. Add plenty of freshly made tomato sauce and melted cheese, and you're good.

That's pretty much where the genre is at the moment. Eli Roth's Hostel pictures pushed said scenes to pornographic extremes while promoting xenophobia (those sadistic Eastern Europeans!) and, in the sequel's final minutes, cynical class warfare (if you have the plastic you can buy your way out); the Final Destination movies turned death into a series of intricate Rube Goldberg sequences, where the chief pleasure is in trying to predict from what direction the blow will come, and how; the Saw franchise took the cliche--mechanically baroque death manipulated by mad genius--and (in a shameless bit of hypocrisy bordering on genius) turned it into a demented therapy session, forcing the victim to either resolve his particular personality failure or die trying.

The genre found itself on the slippery slope of diminishing returns, at the end of which lay the Wayan Brothers' Scary Movie parodies--four as of last count, of increasingly poor quality (the Wayans wisely left after the first two); a fifth installment was announced some three years back, and is still (knock on wood) in development hell.

Whedon takes the genre by the back of its scruffily disreputable neck and gives it a few good shakes. This is a movie where all the classic ingredients are in place (five gullible kids; a gorgeous but isolated location; the classic Southern hillbilly (the wonderful Tim de Zarn) intoning prophecies of doom) yet what happens doesn't all go according to formula. Whedon shows affection for these tired conventions, but doesn't try sugarcoat them--if anything, he uses their familiar quality to leap into the unknown, into far more imaginative (and for me, more productive) directions.

Difficult to say what those directions are. Problem with movies nowadays is that there is so much demand for product--for teasers and trailers and cast interviews that reveal entirely too much--that no movie twist ever comes as a complete surprise (the fact that I'm writing about such a surprise is already a dead giveaway).

That said, one can know details about Whedon's script (co-written by Whedon alumnus and film's director Drew Goddard) and still enjoy just how expertly and effectively this one is put together--how, for example, we learn that the Jock isn't just a jock, and still make the moment quietly amusing (“Where did you learn about all this stuff?” “From you, okay? I learned it from watching you!”); or how the characters allude to parallel action taking place elsewhere (“We might as well tell Japan to take the rest of the weekend off.” “Yeah, right. They're Japanese. What'll they do--relax?”); or later how Whedon suggests the dawning of understanding in some minds, the lack of same in others (“Puppeteers...” “Pop Tarts? Did you say you have Pop Tarts?”). There's even a moment set aside for expressing the views of what I'm guessing is Whedon's favorite candidate for most blatant and consistent evil, the conscientious administrator (“This is all most unpleasant. I know you can hear me. I hope you'll listen”). Plus a moment of plain and simple humanity (“I'm sorry I almost shot you. I probably wouldn't have”).

Whedon displays a fanboy's love for the classic genres--the western (Firefly), the horror flick (Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Angel; this picture), the science fiction dystopia (Firefly; Dollhouse), the same time he shows a gift for goosing said genres, taking their overfamiliar conventions and sending them spinning in startling new directions. He's on record as saying this is his attempt to revitalize the horror film--a noble sentiment, I'm sure.

I doubt if the film will revitalize much, unfortunately; the genre--at least the subgenre of 'cabin in the wood' horror--has sunk too low, I think, grown too repetitive, too tired. What the picture has done instead is hammer in the last nail of the coffin (“I come to bury Caesar, not praise him”). This isn't Whedon's attempt at resuscitation so much as it is his final tribute, his sendoff and farewell.

I know there are hints of a possible sequel, but Whedon attempts one at his peril--can a sequel do justice to what's already been done? Can it deliver as much fresh wit, as many new ideas? Can we, if the answer to both be negative, leave well enough alone? This is the 'cabin in the woods' picture to end all 'cabin in the woods' pictures--or at least is of sufficient quality to allow the subgenre to end on a fairly respectable note. Please, Lord, can we let it rest in peace?

First published in Businessworld, 5.3.12

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).

Cabin in the Woods; Mirror, Mirror; Super Noypi; Citizens' Band; The Shanghai Gesture

The last word

Cabin in the Woods (2012) is fun, a deconstruction exercise the way Scream was only wittier and more imaginative, with some serious muscle behind the evil behind it all.

Best way to see it is go in knowing as little as possible, I'd say; Whedon's script lets you know quickly what kind of movie this is, then complicates matters as swiftly as possible.

I do like it that the film takes the time to individualize the characters--we get some sense of who they are, care if they survive or not. Also like it that the film pulls some fast ones in plausibility--some unlikely coincidences, some lucky breaks--that stretch but don't snap the rubber bands of credibility (can't recall the proper term, was best I could think of).

Joss calls this his reaction against torture porn; damn straight. We need more of this kind of horror, less of that dull torture fare.

Only wish Joss had directed it--think he's a fine director, that he can do more with the camera (even the handheld kind) than most directors his age, or younger.

It's just a fantasy

And to continue with the genre-benders, Tarsem Singh's Mirror, Mirror (2012) is every bit as sloppily told as his Immortals--sloppier, in fact--but for all the cheesy effects, the story does enjoy the benefit of a genuinely funny script, and a cast as good-naturedly game as it is energetic (the standout being Armie Hammer as the unreservedly silly prince--for once, genuinely charming--and Julia Roberts as the deliciously evil queen).

The film's real star is Singh, who (unlike, say, Gary Ross) knows how to stage and shoot sword fights--they come off as both coherent and inventive. He knows how to wring every ounce of drama out of his always impressive sets (a ballroom with a gigantic bow of an entrance; a cozy dwarves' den; an enchantingly enchanted forest) and his outrageous costumes (designed by the late Eiko Ishioka, whose work on this film was, alas, her last).  

Super hero

 Quark Henares' Super Noypi (2006) isn't without its share of problems--okay, more than its share of problems--and you can see what a frustrating experience this must have been for the filmmaker: he's finally gotten a decent budget, a chance to show what he's got, and he's forced to fashion what he feels to be a piece of ordure. 

But after all's been said and done--the movie isn't that bad. Yes, the effects are terrible and some of the sets and costumes worse; yes the storytelling can at times seem painfully awkward. At the same time it manages to communicate the essential sanity of teens, it's inside them the way John Hughes likes to think he is (mostly with upper middle-class Caucasian teens, and a lot less often than you'd imagine). 

The plot twist when it comes is genuinely surprising, and surprisingly moving, and you can't help but note the differences between this and something like Chronicles: in the former the anti-hero commits crimes in the name of a wronged father or mother or beloved other; in the latter the anti-hero suffers his past hurts and his angst and doesn't really give a damn about anyone else...

Talk radio

Jonathan Demme's Citizen's Band (1977) is a lovely tribute to middle America--to ordinary people reaching out and annoying each other from hundreds of miles away (anticipating the Facebook culture by some twenty-six years). It's a colorful cast--a bigamous trucker; a hooker operating out of her trailer home; a seductive-voiced siren; an eager operator determined to enforce the rules of on-air courtesy (Paul LeMat) at the risk of life and limb.

The last is the hero of the film, for no other reason than that he has the most screen time, and has the unthankful task of trying to rein in his fellow conversationalists--not going to happen, but we have a time watching him try.

Charles Dickens might have written the screenplay to this movie, if he ran a ham radio: the sense of teeming, overwhelming life; the occasional touches of sentiment and pathos; the sympathy for all people, no matter how 'little.' These qualities shine through and feel like a updated version of his fiction, only Demme's has an unmistakable American quirk to it--every character there realizes he possess by birthright the opportunity to reinvent him or her self on a larger, more vivid scale, befitting the larger, more vivid landscape, and does so accordingly.

Come with me to the casbah, darling
 

Adopted from a play by John Colton, Josef von Sternberg's The Shanghai Gesture (1941) had to turn the original brothel into a casino, the drug addict into a degenerate gambler--but what a casino, and what a gambler! The club rises in a series of concentric circles, with a roulette wheel spinning at the very bottom, each circle embraced by wrought metal rails depicting paradisiacal birds and lush forests, the floors teeming with Asians and Europeans of every type indulging in every kind of vice. Think of Rick's Cafe conceived as an oriental Dante's Inferno--hell choking cheerfully in its own cigarette fumes.

(And who else should be spinning the bottom roulette wheel but Marcel Dalio himself? Obviously Michael Curtiz or his producers had seen this film and appropriated the man as a kind of Seal of Authentic Decadence for their own (frankly impoverished-looking) gambling den, in a far more wholesome (read: bland) melodrama)

As for the beautiful Eurasian Poppy (the name being the only hint left of the girl's original addiction), the censors kept Gene Tierney from really cutting loose, but she and Sternberg did their level best to suggest hedonism at its most amoral and monstrous, and damn if they didn't come close, with Tierney draped over every available sofa and bar counter and man, her luscious body poured into the various slinky gowns designed for her by her then-husband Oleg Cassini.

Censorship be hanged--it's a heedless spectacle where Victor Mature recites Omar Khayyam-like verses with all the relish of a Penthouse Forum Letter of the Month, where Ona Munro as Mother Gin Sling lovingly describes her sexual degradation from one big-city harbor to another, and Walter Huston as Sir Guy Charteris smiles icily, thinking himself protected by money and power, unaware of the fatal course his destiny is describing--a gradual but inevitable spiral into destruction and despair. A masterpiece, in short.

4.13.12