New year, new look, new blog / The Fighter (2010)

If you've had a chance to read my blog, you know that I said in my very first post that I would generate 100 reviews of film and writing that I enjoyed during the summer. As with most endeavors, I wildly overestimated the amount I would be able to accomplish in the time that I had.

However, my boundless enthusiasm prevails in the new year, and with some encouragement and the sense of enjoyment I get from thinking about and writing about films and entertainment, I will endeavor to restart my blog and give myself an excuse to avoid more serious work, and maybe, just maybe, help you waste five to ten minutes a week of your employer's time this year.

As a side note, while this blog will remain hosted on blogger, I plan on eventually moving the business end over to my website (andrewroback[dot]com) where I will eventually start another blog related more to my research. Without further delay, my first review of the new year.

The Fighter (2010)

Dir. David O. Russel, 112 min., in Chicago theaters

When I went to see the visually beautiful Black Swan (2010)* I saw the trailer for The Fighter and leaned over to say to my wife "I think I've seen this film before. Wasn't it called Rocky?"

Boxing films in general seem to typify the underdog storyline trajectory that we crave so very much when we go to the theaters. This type of plot line is embedded in almost every film that we pay to see, especially in films about sports, and most especially in films about boxing. As most film watchers will agree (I think?): you go to a film to see that film, but you take with you every film that you can remember watching (amongst other things).

I am a huge sucker for most sports films, so I don't need a great deal of convincing to watch one, but I have to say that boxing films don't quite do as much for me since they seem to be so heavily interested in the build up to the final fight sequence that the rest of the movie becomes window dressing. The Fighter spices things up with two exciting fight sequences, while introducing concurrent plot lines of family drama and a love interest story.

Most of the drama centers on the tension between our boxer, Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg) and his dysfunctional family, including mother/manager Alice Ward (Melissa Leo) and brother/trainer Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale) who rides the laurels of a questionable knockdown he scored in a bout with Sugar Ray Leonard that most of the world outside of Lowell, MA has long forgotten. Wahlberg gives us his typical ineffectual line delivery and flat facial expressions, which actually fit the role well since he is a passive punching bag (pardon the pun) of a character both in the ring and out. Amy Adams plays his love interest (Charlene Flemming) who causes the (relative) change in Wahlberg's character, causing him to finally start working towards what he wants rather than being used as a payday for his white trash, lecherous family.

The camera in the film leers on Adams, stressing the her objectification as a character and woman by her surroundings. Bale's movements are jerky and erratic, and his line delivery is insufferable (which I suppose was the point). Despite the tawdry attempts at engendering pathos for his character later in the film using his infant son (who really only appears to tug at the heart strings), perhaps the saddest scene is watching him reenact the fight with Sugar Ray that made him the "pride of Lowell" with a fellow junkie in a seedy crack house. The film evolves from a fighting story to a tripartite redemption story, with Adams', Bale's, and Wahlberg's characters all seeking a better existence through his slim chance at success in the ring.

It's hard not to think of Rocky when watching this film, but after some consideration, this film doesn't necessarily rely on all of the same tropes (though there is at least one training montage). The fight scenes themselves alternate between typical film and the type of grainy image you might see on a cathode ray tube television in the 90's, with angles that look like what you might have seen on HBO. However, while that was a nice gimmick, it didn't do much for me as a viewer. I expect no realism from a filmed boxing sequence. I'm not the biggest boxing fan, but fights I have watched involve about ten exciting seconds when punches are actually landing; I've yet to see a fight where the pugilists stand toe to toe in the center of the ring and trade punches in the face like drunken pub brawlers.

Performance-wise, most critics are talking about Bale. He seems to have two gears to his body: gaunt and unbelievably ripped. With most of his gaunt roles, it's difficult to separate his physical appearance from his performance since he looks like a human skeleton (I'm thinking of The Machinist (2004) in particular). In terms of ethos, the role is nailed; I'm not sure if the clip at the end of the film was intended to confirm his ability to capture the real-life character of Dicky Eklund or not, but that certainly is what it accomplishes. Without spoiling the plot, I would say that I didn't feel for his character in the level that I thought the film was going for, but his performance was still impressive if only for his ability to make the role so memorable.

8/10

*I would have loved to review Black Swan, but I saw it so long ago (opening night) that I doubt I could do a full review justice. If you liked other Aronofsky films (Pi, Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain) then it is well worth a viewing.

Well, it's good to be back. I plan on tossing in more classic reviews this go around since I can't see myself making it to the theater as often as I would like this year due to my insanely busy schedule. My goal is going to be at least one review per week, maybe more if time allows.


Next up: A classic review of Wes Craven's surprisingly postmodern Scream (1996)

Romeo and Juliet at the CST

William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, dir. Gale Edwards, 11/9/10 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater

Ms. Edwards, in her discussion of her collaboration with set designer Brian Sidney Bembridge, describes her stage as a once beautiful place inhabited by “wealthy, feuding dynasties” where “the modern world has been imposed on top of the elegant world of the past, now violated and perched on destruction.”

It is clear from Friar Lawrence’s laboratory (a truly beautiful and intricate set piece) that despite the protestations of Ms. Edwards that “the world” of the theater “is described by the characters through poetry and imagination,” a great deal of attention was paid to the physical stage. Her attempt to liken this to a bare bones production is laughable. Brawls are physical and real, with six or more characters hurling barricades at one another during the play’s opening; the sound effect accompanying the Nurse knocking on Friar Lawrence’s door is akin to Thor striking at the forge in Valhalla, and Prince Escalus’ drone of doom has digital echoes to remind us that we are in a tomb, lest the altar fail to do so.

The cuckoo clock machinations of chandeliers swinging up and down, beds and biers spouting from the floor, and stage hands shuffling about the bellows makes for short changes, but places you in the belly of the motorized beast which is this rushed production. Somehow making two and a half hours look flabby, this lean-Shakespeare-machine churns out the production in short order, dispensing with the final scene in a matter of minutes.

The acting was generally adequate, though dangerous overtones of Baz Lurhrman’s Romeo creep into the DiCaprio-esqe reading by Mr. Lillico. Mercutio is done passably well by Mr. Shafir; his Queen Mab monologue is “by the book” but satisfying nonetheless. The worst performance was Mr. Musselman as the Apothecary who did all but twirl his mustache in his few lines. Perhaps avenging his being passed over for a larger part, he comically barrels out from behind one of the silly garage doors on the set like Lon Chaney’s Wolfman leaping from a stand of trees.

A nod to Mr. Haggard as Benvolio, who owned his performance and exceeded the limitations of the character. Similar in quality are Mr. Lively’s Friar Lawrence and Ms. Jones’ Nurse. What they lacked in intensity was perhaps due to Ms. Edward’s reading of these characters as abortive surrogate parents to the star-crossed lovers who must display some measure of detachment in order to fulfil the directorial reading.

Questionable choices included the deletion of the opening sonnet (perhaps Shakespeare’s most famous opening) and the ill suited “music from a motion picture” interludes that swell when the director bossily tells us how we should feel.

Finally, much was made of the lack of spark between Mr. Lillico and Ms. Farmer-Clary as Romeo and Juliet, but that portion of the play seemed an afterthought of the director. Much like the bed that literally descends into the bowels of the stage and returns as Juliet’s bier, the love story seemed to flicker then vanish into nothingness, leaving the audience as “unsatisfied” as Romeo in the orchard. The direction of Romeo’s scene in Juliet’s bed prior to his flight comes off as sleazy rather than sensual, like the actors from a Tennessee Williams play accidentally wandered onto the wrong stage. In fact, much of the energy of this production seems misplaced, perhaps a byproduct of the need to “spice up” a play that has seen overly abundant production.

Salt (2010)

This is probably the last entry I will be able to write for a while since I really don't have any more time to review films before the summer ends. I had fun writing some reviews up and I hope whoever was reading enjoyed them as well. I'm thinking about starting a review blog this fall/winter that will review not just films and entertainment, but also food, music, and other stuff as well. If you're interested in writing about these things (for free) email me at andrew dot roback at gmail dot com and we can talk details. Hope you had a great summer! Oh and, officially, this will be my 35th review or something like that. Even though I failed miserably to generate the amount of content I wanted to, well, there's no excuse, I just failed. Happy rest of the summer :).

Columbia Pictures, 100 min., Dir. Phillip Noyce

(Sort of) heralded as a (pretty decent) action/spy film that will (kind of) take you on a (semi-)non-stop thrill ride, I had expectations for Salt that were (a little) inflated by hype.

However, despite such glowing reviews as "it's not as bad as I thought it would be," I was hopeful that I would at least not dislike the film. From the man who directed Patriot Games (1992) and Clear and Present Danger (1994), I was expecting a smart spy film where there were lots of crazy plot developments and a really interesting cold war plot resurrection. Wrong. In other words, this film played more like Mission Impossible III than Mission Impossible.

A lot of reviews I read/heard praised the action element, but there was nothing outstanding. Action movies of this sort eventually devolve into how many different ways can the protagonist dispose of the baddies. Apart from one interesting scene involving a fire-extinguisher propelled homemade explosive, the action was mostly just Angelina Jolie hitting and shooting random guards.

The plot twists are not that interesting, and often don't reconcile with the supposed plot in some cases. There's not a whole lot of emotional investment in the characters, and the whole cold-war nuclear tension could not be more underplayed. I was expecting it to improve drastically as the film went on, but it just never did. The ending, which I won't spoil for those who wish to see it, belongs in a James Bond film where it may be taken with a level of seriousness appropriate to its mustache twisting obviousness.

The fight scenes are completely vanilla (Angelina Jolie is aging and probably shouldn't have played this role for obvious reasons), and the plot drops out to the most asinine developments possible with ancillary deux ex machina characters tossed in to finish the third act. Much like I was pissed at Iron Man II for overplaying cold war fears, I will reiterate for the rest of us who were born near the tail end: the Cold War is a piece of curious history and not a vivid memory.

The most interesting part of the movie was the idea of a Soviet spymaster creating a group of sleeper agents. Nerd that I am, I would have loved to see more of the training techniques, basically an unpacking of that whole montage. It would have replaced, perhaps, four to six scenes of Ms. Jolie breaking arms and kicking necks, but could have provided some much needed bolstering of the back story that would have made two-dimensional spy cliches into characters.

I don't see much of a future for this series, even though there is a clear setup for a sequel. The film was trying very hard to be The Bourne Identity, but an aging actress in the lead coupled with poor acting and a bad storyline sabotaged this film right from the start.

5/10: Watch Breach (2007) for a much more entertaining spy film

Zombie Film Roundup

Here's part one in what I hope could be a multi-part zombie film review. Let me know if you have any zombie films that you dig because I would love to check them out.

Night of the Living Dead (1968)

Image Ten, 96 min., Dir. George A. Romero, black and white

The defining zombie film that sparked a myriad of imitators never once uses "the zed word" during the film. I'm not a film scholar, so it's hard to say whether NotLD is supposed to be set in the 50's, or is just a low budget flick with old school sentimentalities.

Every female is a hysterical wreck who can't help anyone with anything and needs a good slap, and every male is stereotype (strong man, posturer, greedy self-lover). The screenplay is, frankly, quite awful. The characters aren't fleshed out very much and important details are tossed in as time permits.

The cinematography is quite a different story, however. The film begins during the early evening, and stretches through the night until the following morning. Since the film is shot in black and white, lighting is a huge consideration. Details such as the lighting of the face, dark makeup, and patterns of light and darkness all add to the viewing experience. The soundtrack, which Tobey Hooper obviously took stock of for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), uses otherworldly distortion and long-lasting crescendos to raise the stakes on otherwise stiff zombies and slow, low-budget action.

If you enjoy zombie films or are just starting to get into the genre, this is the gateway for you. Most every detail, and often times, characters, can be found in every zombie film you have seen. Romero's films alone are their own cannon, but this film was the progenitor of zombie films to follow.

8/10

The Omega Man (1971)

Warner Bros., 98 min., Dir. Boris Sagal

Boris Sagal was a television director for an unbelievable amount of series, so it's not too surprising that this movie plays like an extended television show. It could have been a pilot for a longer series.

The film is the second in three film adaptations of Richard Matheson's novel I am Legend. The novel itself depicts the force that represents 'otherness' as vampires, but this film is clearly a zombie picture. The forces against the protagonist can't venture into daylight, but that doesn't differentiate them from zombies since they also avoid daylight. You never see anyone eating flesh, but they aren't sucking blood either. In fact, the question of how these particular undead corpses survive is largely left unanswered. Their stiff appearance and style of attack seem very zombie-like in my opinion.

Charlton Heston plays Robert Neville, a scientist that survives a plague, a plague that seemingly wipes out all of mankind, by injecting himself with the last dose of vaccine after a helicopter crash prevents him from delivering it to the rest of the U.S., er, world, that is...he was definitely going to share it with the whole world...after the U.S. was safe, of course.

His arch nemesis after the plague apocalypse, Matthias (Anthony Zerbe), is the leader of the undead horde who wants to kill Neville. Neville is (in his mansion with a car, electricity, and decently aged scotch) an affront to Matthias' stone age mentality cult of plague infected weirdos who won't even pick up a gun to attack him, and want to return to a simpler life where there's no chance of wiping out humanity with biological warfare. What a bunch of losers. Although, maybe I could read their pamphlet, just to see what a bunch of losers they are. I mean, I won't want to join or anything, but you can't dispute what they say, you know what I mean?? It's not so crazy, I mean, their ideas. And what with those damn terrorists, you never know, I mean, they could totally do that, and shit. Aww man, I should really start looking into bomb shelters. But, I guess I'll finish this review first.

Neville finds some other folks who aren't yet zombie like followers of Matthias, so his life is given purpose other than hunting down the jerks who try to kill him every night. In fact, the first 30 minutes or so play like a Charlton Heston NRA commercial: "How would I kill these damn zombies without my beloved Uzi? You'll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands!"

This film is about as seventies as it gets. Wah-wah bass lines pervade, Heston watches Michael Wadleigh's Woodstock (1970) at the beginning of the film, and the clothes have magnificently large lapels. Oh, and everyone is drinking some kind of brown liquor out of a tumbler at some point, poured from a cut crystal decanter, but of course. Rosalind Cash's (Lisa's) fro is something else, and Paul Koslo (Dutch) looks like he just walked off Woodstock and into the wrong film set, maaahn. Still, watch for the awsomeness that is the finale, and for 70's style nostalgia. I'll totally have to do a 70's horror film roundup at some point.

6/10

Shaun of the Dead (2004)

Universal Pictures, 99 min., Dir. Edgar Wright

Probably the quintessential zombie movie of this decade, Shaun of the Dead draws heavily on Night of the Living Dead in a loving way, erasing the foolishness and flaws of the original and replacing them with tongue-in-cheek references which are hilarious. Barbara (Penelope Wilton) is as dazed as her namesake in NotLD (Judith O'Day), and many of the character types mirror the originals. Despite the allusion to Dawn of the Dead (1985), Shaun of the Dead only lightly references that film.

I won't go too much into detail, since the film is so enjoyable that it really should be watched and not picked apart. There is a theme of repetition, with strong undertones that we all live like zombies and it takes a massive change of pace to help us excel to our full potential, even if that event is the end of the world. In some ways, it is a coming of age piece (buildungsroman), where the protagonist must shed his juvenile exterior and mature into a robust man who is capable of determining his own destiny. The humor is best appreciated by a gen X audience (perhaps British as well), so there are numerous cultural references that exceed my understanding; however, the humor is so endearing that you will have no problem joining in on the fun.

While a parody of zombie/horror films could easily become tiresome (see every Scary Movie for instance), this film is a tutorial in how to parody a genre by including fans and not obtusely excluding the people who would most enjoy a poke at a genre of film that is overdone or short on levity. You need only go as far as the trailer for Vampires Suck to see how parody can epically fail.

9/10

As I said above, I'd like to keep watching some zombie films and writing about them, so if you have any suggestions, send them my way.

Inception (2010)

Warner Bros., 148 min., Dir. Christopher Nolan

There's not too much you can say that hasn't been said and said and said and said, so I'm not sure there's a ton to say that hasn't been said. That's my verbal attempt at translating a Penrose staircase. Incidentally, the first time I saw a Mobius strip at the absolutely fascinating Museum of Science Mathmateca exhibit designed by Charles and Ray Eames, I ended up designing one with Nicole and Sarah and Christine and just marveling at the fact that it was possible. This film has a similar, if more subdued effect.

Inception is a psychological thriller that recalls Christopher Nolan's earlier film Memento (2000), but this is a far better film. It channels some of the energy of Nolan's last two Batman films and plays like Ocean's Eleven, but with fewer characters and more emotional payoff. There's not much need to discuss the plot as you can read Adam's salon.com article and recap the plot in detail for yourself.

What kind of film is this? A heist film, plain and simple. This film has been compared to The Matrix (1999), and that is essentially a heist film as well (thought the stakes are a bit different). A team is assembled in which each member has a particular skill to contribute. One member, (Cobb in this film) has a hangup, or some kind of personal problem that he/she must overcome before the job can be done satisfactorily. The heist involves multiple layers of concurrent threads of action and at least one twist which causes the audience to question the outcome or reassess the rules of the game.

A comparison to The Matrix is valid in my opinion, in that both films offer a fantasy world parallel to the 'real' in which different rules cause spectacular confrontations and contortions of the laws that govern our physical and mental existence. In terms of the outcome of the film, you have to see it to question, then, as Adam's suggest, determine for yourself whether you care what the final scene represents.

In a word, I will echo most critics by saying that it was refreshing to see a movie that was not a sequel, middle-story film, or reboot of an 80's television show. Nolan taps into yet another set of fundamental imagery to project a singular vision that captivates the viewer and truly establishes a world to inhabit for the duration of the film.

9/10: As with most Nolan films, a repeat viewing is in order.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse (2010)

Summit Entertainment, 124 min., Dir. David Slade

First of all, let me address all of the "I'm too cool to see this film" people out there. One, you probably were bawling watching Toy Story 3 or Up, so don't try to pretend that you only watch high art, "grown up films." Two, get out there and live a little; go see a movie that you wouldn't normally see, if nothing else just to bag on it or, maybe enjoy it. Three, if you have a girlfriend/wife who wants to see this film and your going to be a recalcitrant crybaby about seeing it, just man up already. It's not going to be the best two hours of film you've ever seen, but it can't be worse than watching the Cubs get jacked up again or some piece of s*&t sitcom.

That being said, this is my third Twilight movie, and I still don't like them any more than I used to (sorry). I think (and have had confirmed by fans) that these films have more of a payoff for readers of the books than for the average person who walks in off the street expecting to know what's going on. There is little to no effort made to catch up anyone on what happened in the last two films (the later of which I barely remember), and I suppose that's a product of internet/home viewing culture. Makers of the movie just expect that if you're going to see part three of a six part series that you will have the requisite knowledge to understand it. If you ask me, it wouldn't hurt serious watchers to sit through thirty seconds of recap ala Star Wars style scrolling text (or maybe a voice over here and there).

In any case, just like Twilight part two, whatever that was called, I was completely lost. There are, by my count, six or seven vampires and six or seven "shape shifters" (I learned they are not werewolves from listening to AV Talk). They all have back stories, only a few of which were explained via flashbacks during the film. Characters exchange poignant glances, and I suppose we're expected to know why, but I sure as hell didn't. There are more examples of the bewilderment that a non-book reader will experience, but I'll omit them and say that you should not expect to fully understand how or why ancillary characters behave the way they do.

The love interest sequence in this film is essentially two stalkers competing over the target of their obsession, and (without spoiling anything) having to coexist so that said target is not obliterated by an army of obsessive stalkers who want her dead, or something like that. The plot is really secondary in this film. I got the repeated notion that if you're watching the film, it's not to be impressed by storyline or dialogue, both of which are lacking and dimwitted. The fact that there are vampires and "shape shifters" is also secondary, as they could really be any characters as far as I'm concerned (extraterrestrials and extraterrestrial fighters, cult members and papal soldiers, Cubs fans and Sox fans, etc.). If this ambiguity is intentional, I've yet to discover the allegorical relationship to politics or religion that is concealed within the narrative. The stakes essentially come down to which side will the protagonist end up on, something book readers already know and something I frankly don't care about.

The on-screen characters do little to make us care about their fate. The acting from all parties involved is wooden, especially from Kristen Stewart (Bella). She mumbles her way through yet another movie, and her flashes of anger are about as intense as the anger expressed after dropping one's keys down a storm drain. The chastity sequences are something else. I'm not sure where this wave of abstinence heavy tween entertainment came from, but it is definitely entertaining. The reason they don't have sex in this film is because Edward is "from a different time." Really?? Are you that secluded that for 150 years you haven't noticed a change in cultural values, especially after attending one high school after another for that entire time?? He definitely watched some James Dean movies, since his pompadour and clothing seem to mimic that style in the first film.

On a final note, I would like to point out that these are the stupidest immortal people I have ever seen portrayed on screen. Most vampires become cultural paragons, masters of music, art, literature, or science. These people act the way they look. Dr. Cullen, who learned to be a doctor hundreds of years ago, doesn't seem too concerned with advancing medial arts and only really has that talent to justify having someone bandage up Bella after one injury or another. All of the rest just seem content to look cool and drink animal blood, occasionally playing a really stupid game of baseball (that ridiculousness alone warrants a viewing of the first film). The filmmakers at lest felt that it would be wise to give some of these characters a reason for existing this time around, however slim those reasons might be. I don't feel like this film enterprise needs to be as trivial and closely targeted, as vampire films have often found a way into a wider audience base. The exclusivity of having a single audience might appeal to the target market better, I suppose. I myself found little to like in this film.

2/10: I'd love to be one of those supporting characters who just sits there and says nothing then takes home a big, fat check

In case you're wondering, here's how I rate the other two films:

Twilight: 4/10

As I said above, the hilarity of some of the sequences is just great. The acting is terrible, but if you like vampire films you could find something enjoyable about this film. At least the notion of a war between vampires and Native Americans is kind of cool, though never really developed.

Twilight Part Two (New moon??): 1/10

Not worth watching at all. You can probably read the synopsis and fill in the rest. The film introduces the idea of the "Voltari" (I don't even care to look up the correct spelling) which is a Rome-based vampire council, that has yet to do anything cool but has Dakota Fanning as a member (awesome). The film is utterly forgettable, as it takes over the middle story mentality of just killing time until the conclusion even though it is only the second entry.

Countdown to Zero (2010)

Magnolia Films, 91 min., Dir. Lucy Walker
As seen at a free screening

I had some expectations for this film going into it, mainly that shot of people in a park which flashes to white and freezes (which actually happens at some point toward the end of the film), and a lot of clocks counting down to zero, which also actually happens, several times. My expectations didn't totally match with what the film presented, but that didn't necessarily make it a bad film.

Much of the emphasis of the film is in explaining how close we are to a nuclear disaster. It draws it's organization scheme from (some might know) the "sword of Damocles" speech John F. Kennedy made to the United Nations, where he stated nuclear disaster could be caused by "accident, miscalculation, or madness." This was perhaps not the best way to organize the film, as the discussion seemed less focused in the "madness" section and involved much more complex issues than just crazy people with bombs.

A lot was missing: an in-depth discussion of the history of atomic weapons and why they were created, a history of popular resistance to nuclear proliferation, a close look at the United States' use of nuclear weapons against the Japanese people in World War II and how the rest of the world reacted to that usage of nuclear weapons, which factors into the history of nuclear weapons. The filmmakers instead chose to focus on the multiplicity of ways that nuclear disasters could occur apart from a nuclear exchange between warring nations, with a special emphasis on the ease of obtaining, smuggling, and incorporating nuclear material into a terrorist weapon.

I started out saying to myself "I knew all that," but upon reflecting there were some startling facts presented in the film that I didn't know. The film is mostly interviews with experts (although there are interviews with Jimmy Carter, Robert McNamara, and Michail Gorbachev which either too short or edited down too much). There was also a lot of padding. Examples include staged closed caption television shots (which might look familiar to British viewers), endless shots of a blast radius over different world cities, and equally endless shots of nuclear missiles launching from silos.

In terms of the theoretical side of the film, some of the most interesting theories involved how it's impossible to predict some situations, and just having nuclear weapons endangers everyone in the world by virtue of randomness; once a weapon is detonated, Pandora's box is opened and our whole way of life shot to hell. Most people will agree with that line of thought. I also know a few people who maintain that we can't give up nuclear weapons because we would be powerless against a whole host of threats (failed nuclear nation states, terrorist use of nuclear weapons, etc.). To be clear, I don't subscribe to that opinion, but I did not see a whole lot in the film that would change the mind of someone who does.

In our typical hour plus discussion following a documentary, my wife and I got to the subject of how this film compares with other documentaries we've seen in the last four years or so. I felt like some of the issues raised in the film should feel personal, but the filmmakers did not breach the threshold of actually making the threat real and immediate to individuals in a way like (another Magnolia Pictures Co. film) Food Inc. (2010) does. It all comes back to that tricky issue of individual change that I talked about in other documentary reviews.

I won't drone on about An Inconvenient Truth because I could sit here all day and proselytize about how it's the perfect documentary in many ways and how its arguments are crafted elegantly and for maximum effect, but it does have a discernible effect on viewers. The big way it does this is by convincing the viewer that he or she is involved in the problem and can exercise personal power to effect change. It also equates the value of a minor change with having collective power, and those changes are only necessary on inconsequential levels. In other words, for a documentary to be effective (in my opinion) it must convince the viewer that:

1. a change in behavior is warranted,
2. the path to change or the actions necessary are clear, and
3. the change is worthwhile on an individual level (it must be at least worth the individual cost incurred by the change).

All three factors are important. For example, Food Inc. makes the consumer aware that his or her individual decisions are what makes the crooked machine run. Is a change warranted? Yes, people and animals are mistreated and our health suffers as a result of the current system. Is there a clear path to effect the change? Yes, we must consume food products that are produced by a better system, one which treats workers and animals ethically and does not create products that are injurious to our health. Is the change worthwhile on an individual level (i.e. should I change the way I consume food?). No. Organic food products that are ethically manufactured are unaffordable for most people without means.

Now, as the credits role and options are flashed on screen for individual action, I ask you, isn't there an inherent hypocrisy on the part of the film makers by demonstrating that the path to an individual change of behavior is blocked to the average citizen, but then having an expectation that the viewer will have any interest in statements like "buy food from your local farmer"?

Other films do this to better effect. To once again pull out Inconvenient Truth (for the last time) the path to change is simple and often causes the viewer to incur no cost: throw your can into a recycling bin instead of throwing it away. Hey, I can do that! IC is more concerned with convincing people a change is warranted, but the stakes are so low for many of the changes that I can say "Yo Al Gore, I don't believe in global warming, but I can throw my Clamato can into a recycling bin because you asked nicely." And yes, if you don't believe in global warming, your punishment should be drinking only Clamato, forever.

I won't put all of my problems with the documentary film explosion onto this film, because it is mostly in the genre of raising awareness of an issue instead of promoting individual changes in behavior (despite the invitation to text "demand zero" to 97999 or whatever that message was at the end of the film). However, I'm inclined to believe that first of all, few members of the audience were in favor of nuclear weapons who attended this screening, despite the fact that the film was free to watch. Secondly, I feel no more engaged with the issue than I have always felt before the film. There was some talk bandied about at the conclusion of the film which stressed how popular support caused reductions in nuclear weapons, but it's basically saying if there is a revolutionary amount of people who organize, band together, and elect new representatives to government, we can change any policy! Weak.

6/10: If you're in the mood for a double feature, watch Dr. Strangelove, then watch this film. I think they would pair off nicely.

Let the Right One In (2008)

EFTI, 115 min., Dir. Tomas Alfredson, Sweedish with English Sub- and Super-titles, available on Netflix Instant Queue

Something about this film resonates with those of us who have lived in a place where there is a desolate winter, which is anyone in Chicago. There is a strange sense of foreboding provided by the deserted natural landscapes, reinforced by the performances and carefully calculated presentation of the child actors in the lead roles. Every detail is attended to, and there is no escaping the longing for a sense of relief at every moment in the film: a sense that everything will be sorted out. The tension is exquisite.

It probably doesn't hurt that I watched this film during a thunderstorm, which provided the appropriate, morose backdrop, occasionally punctuated with thunder claps for effect. The settings and shots are beautiful, but in an eerie way which reminds one that the starkness of the architecture and landscape mirrors the emotional climate of the characters, cold and subdued.

The innocence and desperation of the protagonist, a 12 year old boy named Oskar (Kåre Hedebrant) contrasts with the need for attachment and understanding by the young vampire, a "twelve year old" "girl" named Eli (Lina Leandersson). Oskar is tormented by bullies and emboldened by Eli to defend himself, the irony resting in the fact that the timid girl who prescribes retaliation is herself a merciless predator.

It plays out in a way that should not be ruined for viewers, so I won't talk further of the plot. Of vampire movies, which I rightly or wrongly consider myself a burgeoning aficionado, I highly recommend it. The plot action and acting is straight as an arrow, so don't expect laughs outside of the infrequent comic relief. Vampire rules are redefined along conventional lines, so there's no learning curve. I hate to bring up Nadja since I will reference that in my Bowie roundup, but the lighting and shots in the film are similar. There is an effort (in my opinion) to avoid face shots in scenes in order to build contrast between the activities of the everyday and the visually stunning shots that break into the consciousness of the viewer later in the film.

The setting and sense of place in the film are unusual. I wasn't sure for a while whether this film takes place in the late 70's / early 80's, or whether props and wardrobe are meant to convey social class (e.g. Napoleon Dynamite). There are some political hints tossed in, but my Swedish history is a bit rusty. I couldn't really pinpoint the language either, which was a distraction since I felt I was missing some supporting details that a European viewer might pick up on.

I felt throughout the whole movie that there was an unsettling undercurrent surrounding each character. In that way, the film was very Hemingway-esque. You saw just enough of the characters to interject your own back story, rather than sitting through an extra hour of film. This is really a film that you should see for yourself, so I'll recommend a viewing.

8/10

The Swarm (1978)

Warner Bros., 155 min. (extended version)/116 min. (theatrical), Dir. Irwin Allen

The first thing you'll notice in the byline above is that there is an extended version and theatrical release. I did not know this when I queued it up on Netflix, so I watched the bloated 155 min. extended version which included a subplot involving a romantic contest between two middle aged men for a retirement age elementary school principle. Yikes, nothing makes like good watchin' more than two middle aged dudes wooing a southern belle, if you're into Evening Shade that is. I, however, wanted angry mutant bees, some great one-liners, and super-ridiculous pseudoscience.

The film opens with a special forces team landing on a nuclear missile base in Texas. Quizzically, the special forces team is operating on the assumption that a commie biological weapon strike killed the staff, yet you can see exposed skin between the sleeves of their "bio-hazard suits" (painter's jumpsuits) and black leather driving gloves. Also interesting, before they even know that the threat is bees, they have flame throwers. It will all come together by the end of the review, my friends.

It turns out that a swarm of killer bees stung most everyone in the base to death, and Michael Caine, an entomologist and the foremost bee expert in the world, happens to be out by that desert wasteland when this goes down. The President places him in charge of the military forces with one mission: kill the bees. Oh, and the base is right next to a town who's main industry is growing flowers. And it's blooming season.

Now I'm not saying I could write or direct a motion picture, but it must be hard to make both Michael Caine and Peter Fonda look like the two worst actors in the world. Caine essentially has three gears in the film:

• Crazy bee guy: "The war we've been fearing is finally here," referring to a war between Africanized bees and humans, something still that keeps me up at night


• Angry at the U.S. Army guy: "LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING GENERAL!!!" If you watch for nothing else, watch for the countless screaming arguments between Caine and Illinois' own, Richard Wildmark


• The guy who doles out conciliatory lines like "there was nothing we could do," something he'll get ample opportunity to say

Much like a lot of these bloated seventies action films, the plan is to get the smart, middle-aged white men into a control room to hash this thing out over black coffee and cigarettes. This film is even worse, as the women are pretty much window dressing. The one female lead who does something is billed as Helena (Katherine Ross) in the credits, despite the fact that she is an Air Force lieutenant and a doctor. She also saves a bunch of men from bees by dragging them into a bunker and escapes by crawling through an air conditioning vent, which is not shown as the film begins in medias rez. She doesn't even get a "way to go" for that one. I'm pretty sure a man would have gotten a medal, or maybe just a pat on the back, or something. But she's just a woman, a woman who gets replaced as chief doctor when a crisis hits and basically becomes Peter Fonda's lab assistant / ward nurse. She does provide someone to protect from danger and flirt with later on in the film, though.

This movie is based off a novel by the late Sci-Fi writer Arthur Herzog. I couldn't help but think about The Andromeda Strain when I watched this film as they share the same basic premise: both films present a foreign threat that has no foreseeable solution; both films involve gathering the best scientists in the world and sequestering them in a secret military installation to develop a solution. Whereas Andromeda takes the nerdy intellectual route, The Swarm eventually turns into another film about communists invading America, but with bees instead of a Soviet-Cuban alliance. The bees are constantly treated like an invading army and personified, allegedly possessing strategies and tactics designed to beat the military. As they make their way toward Huston (and there is no reason at all given as to why they're are going there) the Army officers keep referring to them as "The Africans." Don't even ask me why that is. I guess you can't refer to them as the bees, seeing as you might confuse them with the Eurasian or Australian bee armies.

Let's see, so far we've had mutant bees and some great one-liners delivered in full screaming fury by Michael Caine, now all we need is some really bad science. How's this: the bees sting some people in a nuclear power plant and, as a result, the plant explodes. Check - and - mate.

**Spoiler Alert**All the 40+ minutes of character development for the townspeople is pretty much wasted as they die in a train accident halfway through the film while trying to evacuate. There are survivors, but I guess at 155 lean minutes, the director felt it would be better not to include a 15 second scene telling us if any of them were the supporting characters from earlier.

The bees eventually begin "the occupation of Huston" and the Army does the only logical thing: start burning the city down with, you guessed it, flame throwers!! I take you now to their base of operations downtown, 11 p.m., a high rise building with floor to ceiling windows:

"Hey Private Smith, you really shouldn't be playing catch with that brick inside our glass fortress becaus--oh shit!! Anyone have insecticide...oh yeah, we tried that 72 minutes earlier in the film and it didn't work. Welp, I had a good run, lots of fun tim--and now I'm getting stung to death..."

Stupidly enough, the bees get in through the elevator, sting some dude, and as he's dying he breaks the window. Thanks, man. Way to die in the most selfish way possible.

In a brilliant piece of writing, Caine and Ross go from fleeing the bees that are loose in the building, bees so deadly that they can drop a full grown man with one sting mind you, and in the very next shot they are in a jeep, driving in an airfield, in the daytime. I've only seen one other movie that so blatantly disregards a viewers intelligence¹ and just spreads some frosting over the gaping hole in the cake.

The brilliant plan to kill the bees: spill a bunch of oil in the Gulf of Mexico, lure the bees there with their mating sound, then light it on fire.

4/10: If bees invade, at least we've got one part of the solution taken care of already

¹That film was The Core (2003). For some BS reason a team of scientists needs to make it to the core of our planet, and most of the crew dies along the way from numerous, extremely boring geological dangers. After the mission is accomplished (no spoiler alert because you won't want to see this film at all), the two remaining terranauts (I love that word) go from the core of our planet to the ocean floor with a caption that reads "three days later." Great ending. I just wish the whole film would have been the title screen, then a screen that says "a month and a half later," and then the credits.

Note: I was reading some Shakespeare related stuff, but I plan on watching some movies this weekend and even reviewing some new releases next week

Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later (2007)

DCTV, approx. 70 min., Dir. Brent Renaud

To believe a desegregated school exists is a myth, at least that is the message behind Little Rock Central: 50 Years Later. And after seeing the film, I have little to disagree with.

First and foremost, the film focuses on socioeconomic privileges and how they play out in our secondary education system. While the filmmakers may have felt that they were beating the viewers over the head with ideas like "how do parents attend PTA meetings when they work two jobs?" or "how is it that the golf team is all white at a school that is predominantly black?" they probably could have made more probing assertions about the nature of segregation at Little Rock Central. It seems an impossible contradiction, but I want documentary films to be both subtle and explicit, objective and inflammatory, which is something I haven't come to grips with yet as a consumer or critic, I suppose.

Persons in the film seem divorced from the production qualities in their narratives, more so than other films I have seen. There is also a surreal quality of hearing and seeing biased perspectives that are out of touch with reality, a feeling that is brought to a head when a child in one classroom is asked by one of the original students who fought to be integrated to point out the historical irony in her classroom (seated to one side, the black students, and on the other, the white students). As with everything, the rhetorical effects of presentation loom large, but work on a more subtle and basic level in this film.

A positive is born of the passivity demonstrated by the subjects of the film: the opportunity for a viewer to feel the frustration at trying to forcibly integrate two cultures who are the products of their progenitors' mistrust and economic trajectories. The irony for the viewer is that we can see the sociocultural factors that lead to their opinions, but do nothing to interject. The self-replication of systemic segregation is also demonstrated in the attitudes and opinions of those interviewed.

If you are waiting for overt racism to be revealed in any of the film's subjects, don't hold your breath. With every opinion as to why de facto segregation exists (as subjects put it: "two schools inside one school") the viewer must make a determination as to the extent to which different opinions hold merit; oftentimes I was left with the unsatisfying conclusion that people in the film, even if they are lying, believe their explanations to be true. I once read a phrase that went something like this:

The conscience tells me 'I did that,' while the ego says, 'that is not me, I could not have done that.' The ego wins.

Self-perception dominates reality, and what is repeated by the film's subjects ("people tend to associate with people they like regardless of color") supplants the reality, which is that "the people they like" are most often of similar appearance to themselves.

In any case, the attentive viewer can see that race, class, appearance, and socioeconomic status are inextricably linked in terms of a high school education. You need only travel to any CPS school to experience the same frustration for yourself. The issue left unaddressed in the film (due to scope) is the attempt to fix problems associated with underserved members of our society, and that is an issue which should haunt and influence our decisions for our entire lives.

8/10

Moon (2009)

Liberty Films, U.K., 97 min. Dir. Duncan Jones

I tried to see what the deal was with Moon by doing a Google news search, but between Despicable Me and Twilight: 3/4 Harvest Moon, or whatever the new one is, I gave up immediately. I wanted to know where this film came from and how it ended up on my TV since I don't remember any trailers or reviews, but it was in my Redbox list since like last year and is still available there (and on Netflix Instant Que).

The SciFi elements of this film exist to both provide a backdrop and premise for the action, but also to showcase the moral and ethical dilemmas inherent at the film's core. It's hard to summarize without giving away the many revelations at the heart of the film, so I'll merely set the stage for you. Sam Rockwell (Iron Man 2, Choke) plays Sam Bell, a solitary worker on the moon who collects moon rocks from giant skimmers that reminded me a lot of the harvesters in Command and Conquer (I know, supernerd). The moon rocks power "70% of Earth's energy needs" and his job, while incredibly important, is extremely monotonous and drives him to distraction and disinterest. As with most endurance films, things start to break down right around the end of his time there, worrying his only companion: a robot that is ingeniously done up as the type you would see assembling cars, but with artificial intelligence that makes him capable of affection for Sam, even if it is programmed. Anyway, things are looking pretty good for Sam's departure before an accident occurs, which will reveal a lot more about what's going on up on the moon.

There's a lot to like about this film. If you dug 2001: A Space Oddssey (1968) which is really a first rate science fiction film, then you will dig this. Moon has the benefit of CGI, but its use is not to generate poorly-rendered Rastafarian aliens: it serves as a tasteful and complementary backdrop to the set pieces which really make you think of Kubrick. Kevin Spacey does his best HAL as the voice of the robot, which cashed in on 2001 without completely ripping it off, but I don't think his vocal performance could get any closer to the original monotone voiced by Douglas Rain.

The tension between laxity and the perfection needed to exist in a zero atmosphere environment where the slightest miscalculation or mistake can instantly kill you in the most painful way possible is really demonstrated here. There is one particular scene where Sam tries to pass off a minor mistake caused by psychological stress as a simple accident, only to have the robot grill him with questions. Every ancillary detail of the film (carving miniatures with a pen knife, botany, ping pong) is presented in a way which heightens the fact that we often expend an extraordinary amount of attention on what we like to do, and tend to treat the monotonous work of everyday which is critical to other people and our own survival as a cakewalk (perhaps to exercise control over that which we are masters of in order to defray the tension of the uncontrollable or that which challenges us the most...).

7/10: Speaking of diffusing some tension, a lighter side of the moon

Breaker! Breaker! (1977)

Paragon Films Inc., 86 min., Dir. Don Hulette

So I was flipping through upcoming films on IFC since I no longer have that channel, and this one came up. I figured, at 86 thrill packed minutes, at least i wouldn't be wasting my whole night.

A very young Chuck Norris plays J.D. Dawes, a "zen trucker" who stops off to take a break at a truck stop and let his little bro (Michael Augenstein) haul some frozen dinners. The only thing that really identifies him as a "zen trucker" is that he's doing some kind of meditation exercise with two dudes and he karate kicks a lot of hillbillies around. I guess you can't expect too much back story from a film that has "Hit in the Face" as a keyword on IMDB.

Breaker! Breaker! has the ominous "N/A" rating on Rottentomates.com, meaning there were either no reviews or this was a direct to DVD type thing. I can see why. There is virtually no story whatsoever. Norris' little brother gets kidnapped by a small town Sheriff's department and there are a bunch of fistfights along the way. Norris befriends and sleeps with the judge's daughter, which as you might imagine don't sit too well with him. There's some question in Norris' zen trucker mind about whether his brother is even in the town, until, get this, the judge's daughter serves a frozen dinner of the same brand that his little brother was hauling!!!!!

Things get ugly, and since the judge is too old and fat to fight Norris, he has a confrontation with one of the deputies that you can watch on some dude's bootlegged VCR recording on YouTube. When I was watching I kept yelling "break that bottle!" and sure enough, he does. The fight takes place in a horse corral and for some reason the director felt it necessary to keep cutting to shots of the horse during the fight. Is the horse a metaphor for Norris' spin kicks? It's like the director woke up, watched half of a Sergio Leone western, said "hey, I think I'll try that," and four hours later Breaker! Breaker! was printed and ready for distribution.

Ahh, but there's more. The film score is porno grade, at best. It sounds like a cassette tape from the $0.99 bin at a truck stop piped through a boombox, which might have been the point, but I doubt it. The martial arts: let's just say that Norris might have had a black belt at the time, but the choreography and his fellow "actors" make him look like Star Wars Kid. There a lot of "I can see space between your foot and the other guy" kicks and "that dude just hit the deck three seconds too soon" punches.

*SPOILER ALERT*During the final fight, which Norris wins with his forty-ninth spin kick, his GF gets on the CB Radio and calls for backup in the form of a fleet of trucks that is so large it makes the earth shake. The only problem, the producers could only afford three or so trucks. They basically destroy the whole town, which consists of unused set pieces from Bonanza. In terms of great trucker flicks, this definitely is not one of them. In fact, trucking had hardly anything to do with the movie really, apart from the sparse use of CB radios and trucking metaphors. However, if you haven't seen this film and you have Netflix, I have to recommend watching it because it is too funny to miss out on.

6/10: Time to take this rig home buddyboy...and by that I mean shutdown my computer

Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

Overture Films, 127 min., Dir. Michael Moore

My political views are no mystery to anyone who knows me, and this is supposed to be a blog about film and entertainment, so I will do anyone reading a favor and omit the majority of my stump speech.

I'm no lover of the capitalist economic system because it stresses accumulation over concern for individual happiness and welfare, as Mr. Moore demonstrates in his film.

Moore is reviled on the left and right, and I think he gets a bad rap because of his stupid antics which cater to the type of audience that wouldn't watch this film in the first place, the people who don't vote or care at all how civics operate in this country. I'll now pull a Family Guy style cutaway gag to demonstrate my point. Here's what you might have witnessed if Moore had called me up prior to filming this movie and you were in the room watching me talk to him:

Hey Michael, how's it hangin' bud.

Oh yeah, your new movie.

You say you want to drive an armored car up to a Wall Street bank and ask for the taxpayers' money back. I'm not so sure about that. It didn't really work in Roger and Me when you asked the President of GM for an interview and--

oh wait, what's that--

You're going to go back to GM to do the same exact thing you did in 1989. Ahh...um...I see. You know what, I'm getting another call.

No, I'll call you back. Go Michigan! (scene)

Moore's at his best when he's explaining to you how everything is Washington is just a cash grab, but a lot of his stunts really wear thin after a while. The films are composed primarily of alternating human interest/soft news pieces, images of important people standing together who shouldn't be standing together, redacted documents, and dumb antics like those described above.

I'm not a hard sell on his line of thinking, and even I was getting a little tired of having peoples' personal tragedies paraded around like so much cheap filler. I suppose I weary of Moore hogging the spotlight. He turns all of his films into a documentary about his personal outrage rather than the subjects in the documentary itself. Notice how he not only conducts, but is pictured in all of the interviews; he also assumes this aggravating, child-like inflection in his voiceovers (example: "I asked Mr. Executive for an interview, but he said noooooo. I caaaan't imagine whiiiee"). Can the fake sarcasm already, sheesh.

The film closes on a revolutionary note, basically inciting people to take action against an unfair system of laws that privileges the wealthy one percent of our population which people fruitlessly try to join. Hey buddy, the financial system isn't doing me any favors, but what should I do, go smash up an ATM because I have no money? Any freshman in college will tell you that it's a self-replicating system, and until I'm in a rebellion wearing a red armband and throwing fire bombs at armored cars, I don't see a whole lot of outlets for my frustrations other than Buy Nothing Day.

I also got the sense that Moore is tired of defending himself against conservative rebuttals because he either just doesn't care to win over the opposition anymore (that is, he's just preaching to the choir at this point) or because he sees the intransigence and corruption of government officials as an insurmountable obstacle that needs to be burned down instead of sidestepped.

I could try to salvage some of the facts presented in the film and toss them out here, but the truth is that it's a challenge to watch a Moore film and separate fact from schmaltz. I've seen plenty of documentaries that can offer a more balanced opinion, but mainstream films like this rely on emotionally charged interviews with sobbing women and enraged men to make their points for them. If you're going to make a film that educates the public on a critical issue (and, yes, the oppression of workers and the willful destruction of the middle class in this country is a critical issue), step up your game from the "Everyday Hero" and "Real American" soft news tripe served up by the 6:00 evening news.

5/10: Hey wealthiest one percent, take a tip from Moore: The time is now to quicken the pace on your pleasure palace construction projects before this whole capitalism thing falls apart!!

Iron Man 2 (2010)

Paramount, 124 minutes, Dir. John Favreau


You know you're a dork when you're trying to explain to your wife on the car ride home why a new element couldn't possibly be represented by the holographic projection that Tony Stark is viewing in his laboratory in Iron Man 2. But this revelation is no surprise to anyone reading this.

Despite it's numerous scientific flaws, which admittedly one must overlook in order to enjoy a movie about a dude that flies around in an impenetrable suit and has a futuristic battery in his chest, IM2 falls short on so many aesthetic levels, which I will list here.

One: The film is a star delivery system. The screenplay fails to provide adequate lines and backstory for most of the characters played by major Hollywood actors. I still don't understand why the hell Samuel L. Jackson was in this film.

Two: Apart from special effects wizardry, the cool technology developments are largely unexplained. Tony Stark erecting what looks to be a particle collider that shoots an energy stream out of a hole in the side that hits what looks to be a miniature middle school band triangle does not explain how he develops a new element. I love cheezy comic book science, but I like it to have some kind of connection with the plot, which was too much to ask in this film.

Three: Why is the role of "Rhodey" played by Don Cheadle instead of Terrence Howard? Think we wouldn't notice?? Just like Matrix two, eh?? Wrong, my friend.

Four: Hey writers (this includes you, Stan Lee), the Cold War ended a while ago. Hence, the forced Russo-American arms race tensions seem a bit outdated. Is this a Tom Clancy novel?

This is the point where I would expand on the plot, but there isn't really much to say. Stark (Downey Jr.) predicts that he alone will maintain "the peace" (even though we see nothing in the way of global peace initiatives or Iron Man's hand in monitoring global peace--was there a war to begin with?), and then foolishly betrays the world's trust by getting hammered at his birthday party in the Iron Man suit, which is probably one of the funniest scenes in the film. It all sounds very colonial, seeing as it's once again the mighty U.S. alone (and a playboy millionaire at that) who will force the world's haters into submission. This movie really only works if you suppress the urge to think about why anything is happening.

An 80's style Soviet Cold War scientist emerges to avenge himself against the west for ruining his father's dreams of becoming a bourgeois fat cat. One of the best lines: "after he was deported, he spent the next 20 years in Siberia in a vodka fueled rage." Sweet. Way to flatten out the characters into razor thin caricatures.

I guess what sold me on the original Iron Man is that Stark undergoes an exercise in humility where he is forced to use raw talent and guile to outwit his opponents, and then reflect on the monster he created through his involvement in the military-industrial complex. It's spelled out in huge letters, but the film has a point. This movie is Stark's character delivering one idiotic one liner after another, and Downey Jr. brings a halfhearted performance. In part, the timing of this film may be off; I doubt there are too many people who care to watch the personal life problems of a billionaire playboy lamenting over his having to assume responsibility for the mess he created through his self-righteous arrogance.

4/10: He should really be called "Synthetic-Alloy-Wisecracking Man" in my opinion

When You Are Engulfed in Flames -- David Sedaris (2008)

Back Bay Books, Paperback, 323 p., $15.99

I read a review in The New Yorker a while back of a book that's on my reading list this summer which outlines the history of memoir. In that review, critic Daniel Mendelsohn describes memoir as:

a drunken guest at a wedding, [...] constantly mortifying its soberer relatives (philosophy, history, literary fiction)—spilling family secrets, embarrassing old friends—motivated, it would seem, by an overpowering need to be the center of attention.

Wow, what a ringing endorsement for a genre. Seeing as I now teach young minds how to appreciate a public divulging of family secrets and a printed, mass-disseminated embarrassment of old friends, I'll now defend memoir as a genre.

The question: is memoir more for the author, or for the audience? My answer: it's for both. The author goes through a (sometimes solipsistic) process of self-discovery, unearthing truths about his or her inner life that resonate with the reader, who gets to experience the author's life and be entertained by the content and style of the piece. The author need not be of note, though another dimension of enjoyment is added when the reader can compare conceptions of important (at least to the reader) events or cultural artifacts to the narrative told by a principle participant. What separates the good from the bad, that is, the thought provoking and moving piece of art from the tawdry tell-all? Probably the experience of the reader and the cultural significance associated with the author, but who can say for sure?

Sedaris is described as an essayist and compared to Mark Twain and James Thurber, but his collections of essays are really arranged around themes, as WYAEiF clearly demonstrates in it's metaphorical and very real engagement with death. I probably should have read the review snippets on the back cover before buying and reading this book, as I was looking for something a little lighter and more "haw haw" than 22 essays on the snuffing of life's brief candle. My personal preference aside, Sedaris goes to greater lengths than the last book I read by him, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (2004), to delve deep into his own particularly slanted conceptions of life and evoke those stories which remind one of the shortness of life and fear of death. There's plenty of humor, but in a sinister light which makes one laugh uneasily, such as story about purchasing a human skeleton in Paris for your boyfriend and having him hang it in your bedroom. I personally enjoyed it more than Dress Your Family... even if I wasn't laughing out loud as frequently.

Many of the stories include vivid and humorous descriptions of oddball's that Sedaris has met, worked/lived with, and whom society has rejected. "That's Amore" is a prolonged character sketch of Sedaris' cantankerous neighbor, who is redeemed from her violent racism and general bitterness through her aging and dependence, a reminder that most of us will one day depend on someone else for something. "This Old House" shows how life circumstances transform a boarding house proprietor from Sedaris' dream of nostalgic glamor to a mundane caretaker, her integration into society violently extinguishing the glowing ember of intrigue.

Sedaris, on average, must encounter more interesting people every year of his life than the rest of us do in a lifetime, and some truly pitiful characters are recounted in this book. One of the chief reasons I believe that people read memoirs (or engage in most entertainment) is the desperate need to have contact with people more interesting than ourselves. The most interesting people in the book are pariahs, lunatics, and the type of person that you or I tend to avoid; this is no problem for Sedaris, who's self-described obsessive journaling and note taking record his encounters with and explorations of the characters at the fringe of society. A question that dogs Sedaris and other memoirists is whether they capitalize on the lives of others in their writings. What is the standard by which a random but highly personal or telling encounter might be divulged? Does there have to be meaning or sacrifice to present it to an audience, so that another person's personal problems seem significant or are transcribed with dignity, or can they be lampooned like the rest of us? I don't have an answer. I just thought I'd mention it.

The final essay, "The Smoking Section" is probably one of the best I have ever read. It deals with addiction, the anxiety associated with life changes, and cultural barriers while also delivering a great deal of humor, vulnerability and descriptions of modernity and culture in Japan which deflate our sensibilities of Western individualism.

I won't lie and say that along the way there are not some disposable essays or square pegs jammed into a book which could have lost 50 pages or so, but it was an engaging memoir that jabbed the consciousness of this reader and caused that moment of personal reflection that is so necessary in a genre that needs "to be the center of attention."

Highly Recommended

Up Next: Iron Man 2

The Dead Zone (1983)

I'll pretty much watch anything with Christopher Walken in it, and I guess this is no exception. The Dead Zone follows the life of a high school English teacher who gets into a car accident just prior to marrying his fiancee (Brooke Adams), wakes up after a five year coma to discover she's married, and, oh yeah, can predict the future by shaking someones hand.

The film hangs on to that classic style of cinema that I might not have described in my House of the Devil review, but typifies what I know of 70's/early 80's cinema. The opening sequence usually sets the stage for a film, but doesn't concern itself with introducing all of the characters that will be relevant/alive for the whole film. There are two or three tense events, with each one feeling as though it could be the climax of the film since the stakes are genuinely important. Films shot in the last two decades seem to have leveled out the plot line so that everything is just a waste until you get to the big finish, which usually disappoints.

I won't give any spoilers here for those of you who want to see TDZ (it is available on Hulu and Netflix), but the segmentation of the movie involves roughly three episodes that lead Walken's character to a moral dilemma that is murky at best. Walken plays the role as only he could, and if you are a fan of his particular style of line delivery, there's no shortage of it in this film. Martin Sheen also makes an appearance as a sleezeball political candidate, which was kind of a shocker after seeing him play the president character in The West Wing. He must have "politician" stamped on his forehead.

I'll digress and talk about a sweet 70's movie that this reminded me of. When a Stranger Calls (1979) has the same type of ebb and flow plotline that I think is missing from films in the 90's/00's era. The film does a flip midway through that is completely unexpected. Likewise for Dirty Harry which I just watched recently and never get tired of. There's something about the idea that you can have two or three critical moments in a movie that I just don't think writers/directors buy into anymore. The only film I can think of that I saw recently where the plot action dies with a character or is resurrected with a new storyline is...well, I'm actually drawing a blank, so clue me in if you can think of one.

7/10: three words: weapon of choice

Update: I was thinking about it, and Iron Man (2008) kind of has that feel to it when Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is in the cave in Afghanistan. When I first saw it, I thought the movie would play out entirely in that setting, but the action shifts midway through and another plot develops.

Le grand seduction/Seducing Dr. Lewis (2003)

After my iPhone displayed the incorrect time, and a traffic mishap stopped buses on Ashland Ave., Nicole and I rushed to meet Eva at the Chicago International Summer Screening showing of Le grand seduction/Seducing Dr. Lewis co-presented by the Consulate General of Canada in Chicago, the Chicago Cultural Center, and
Cinema/Chicago.

The film discusses the plight of a coastal Canadian hamlet whose dried up fishing industry has left the town folk down and out. A plan to bring in a factory is in the works, but a full time doctor is needed on the island otherwise it's no deal; the conflict: no big city (Montreal?) practitioners are willing to make the move to a quaint fishing village (I am running out of synonyms for small town at this point). In a desperate bid to bring a factory to the town, the de facto mayor, Germain Lessage (Raymond Bouchard), strings together a plot to entice a big city plastic surgeon (David Boutin) into staying longer than his forced one month stay. There are a few missing details, but the premise is what it is, some small town big/city humor. At stake, the future of the town.

The film itself is hilarious. After the residents learn that the doctor loves cricket, they stage a hilarious half-baked match for his benefit. The whole film revolves around the townspeople catering to the doctor's every wish, going so far as to tap his phone and listen in, sometimes catching scandalous calls to his girlfriend.

The comic timing of the actors in the film, especially Bouchard and the actor who plays his brother-in-law, Pierre Collin, is really great. If your looking for an analogy for the type of humor found in this film, I would say it's close to Hot Fuzz (2008); come to think of it, the plot is similar to The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain but luckily for us there is no Hugh Grant to be found.

I don't think I stopped laughing for most of the film, so this is a good pick if you're in the mood for something light. As with most foreign language films, do watch the subtitles and avoid dubbing, as the delivery in French adds to the humor of many of the jokes.

8/10: un bit inattendu de la comédie de l'été

note: This film played at the Chicago Cultural Center, which was a great place to see a film. I failed to take a picture of the theater, but I will do so next time I go there. All of the times are listed on their website and there is no charge for any of the films. Oh, and here is a random picture of the beautiful stained glass dome outside of the theater.

The Lawnmower Man (1992)

Remember when virtual reality was going to be part of every aspect of computing, nay, life itself? Neither do I. The closest I remember to thinking virtual reality was going to be useful for something was that scene in Jurassic Park (1993) when the scientist was using a gloves and goggles setup to manipulate a DNA double helix in 3D. The makers of The Lawnmower Man, however, really bought into VR as the technology of the future, and simultaneously roped in Pierce Brosnan to play the protagonist in this shabby special effects showpiece. For some reason, I had a notion that this was a widely regarded horror film, but I think I confused this movie and Hellraiser (1987), a mistake that would cost me 107 minutes.

I read a novel in grade school called Flowers for Algernon where a cognitively disabled man is given the same surgery as a mouse in order to vastly improve his intelligence. Apparently the characters in this movie had no contact with this book, as their message is mostly the same. I've seen other movies where people are vaulted to genius from relative obscurity (Phenomenon (1996) with Travolta comes to mind) and they all seem to reach the same conclusion: with super genius comes utter contempt for your former idiot friends and a soul crushing loneliness that is only alleviated by your death or eventual redumbification.

The poor, dimwitted "Lawnmower Man" Jobe (Jeff Fahey)--BTW, since when is "Lawnmower Man" a pseudonym for folks who cut grass for a living?--anyway, his only skill seems to be designing ridiculous looking lawnmowers, cutting grass, and working on his abs, though we don't see the last one in any scenes of the movie. Dr. Angelo, who's recent chimpanzee subject killed a bunch of guards, decides it's time to move on to a human subject. If only the damn military weren't corrupting his research, and injecting rage-ohol into his subjects along with the super brain drugs. Jobe starts his training, which consists of Dr. Angelo throwing Aztec calendars and Alchemy charts at his face in a virtual world. Unexpectedly (for those in the movie only) Jobe starts developing superhuman powers and hatches a plan to dominate the world.

If nothing else, this film has value in that it was just plain wrong about virtual reality. Take a look at this highly scientific caption that begins the movie:



I shall now write the rest of my review as if this prediction had become true...

CYBERDATE: 2 JULY 2010
LOCATION: The cyber-underground bunker, the last place VIRTUAL REALITY is not in widespread use

Hello my virtual friends. Brace yourself for this communication, and make sure you have enough time to download it on your 56k modem, print on your dot matrix printer, and delete it before Jobe's VirtuaCops detect you with their VR helmet scanners.

I am composing this message in the underground, using what they referred to in the 20th century as a "key-board." Sure, it'd be easy to compose this message by strapping on my virtual reality helmet, gloves with wires attached to the fingers, and a tight fitting body suit with neon piping that glows for no explainable reason, but then I'd be opening myself up to Jobe's mind control algorithm, and I won't do that.

I know it might be tempting to use the technology of VIRTUAL REALITY to enter computer generated worlds as unlimited as the imagination itself, where you can access the millions of positive uses that the creators of this technology envisioned, but stay strong my brothers and sisters of the resistance. Until next non-VIRTUAL REALITY cyber-textual-communication activity, formerly known as "electronic-mailing"

-VRfighter_26@excite.com

4/10: We were promised virtual reality

Eraserhead (1976)

There's a scene in an episode of The Simpsons where Homer is watching Twin Peaks (also, directed by David Lynch) and he says, with inflection indicating he is making a profoundly intelligent comment, "I have no idea what's going on." That is roughly how I felt about Mr. Lynch's Eraserhead.

I always wanted to take film classes as my elective, but my abortive attempt at Biology and my double major prevented me from doing so. Occasionally, I would cut class to go with Nicole to her film class, where the professor would let me watch what the film students watched. In that class I saw movies like Pink Flamingos (1972) and The Naked Kiss (1964), and Nicole introduced me to lots of other films that are too numerous to mention but expanded my limited knowledge of independent, cult film classics that are brain jarring.

I didn't particularly like Eraserhead, not so much because, like Homer Simpson, I didn't understand it completely, but more because it missed the mark in terms of my expectations of what it would be. I expect a movie, like a novel, or even a piece of short fiction, to create a world and transport me into that world. The world needn't make sense, but I should feel like I am a part of it, or that I'll never be a part of it. In this film, I couldn't grasp the rules, and I wasn't aware of the fact that there were no rules either. It had enough of the real interspersed to disrupt the surreal.

I have watched some great silent era films that toyed with the conventions of film making and employed creative techniques in order to dazzle, but I didn't get the sense of that here. It's a mood piece, at best, and at worst, a jumble of disjointed sequences that fail to connect.

Here's what I can tell you that I liked about what I watched. Without a large knowledge base of film history, I'm guessing the brutally simplistic and unrelenting tonal soundtrack that builds to crescendos and creates a general uneasiness in the viewer was innovative at the time. What works for me is the juxtaposition of those sounds with lighthearted pipe organ pieces that will remind any Chicago reader of the pre-curtain performance experienced on a trip to the Music Box Theater.

I read on Wikipedia--and by the way, not to get all defensive, but I'll assert my prerogative as a recreational reviewer in this context to use what I read on Wikipedia as a talking point in my analysis despite that fact that it's a cop out for traditional film research. Anyway, I read on Wikipedia that Stanley Kubrick made the cast of The Shining (1980) watch Eraserhead to demonstrate the feel he wanted, and it doesn't surprise me. There seems to me to be a give and take between the crescendo and the tonal punctuation sound methods used in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) (such as when the astronaut approaches Io in the light tunnel and the shot of the monolith at the foot of the bed, respectively) and Eraserhead; this give and take is further developed in the quick cuts paired with sharp tonal sounds in Eraserhead, which Kubrick also used in The Shining. Even if this is some crackpot analysis, the use of sound in Eraserhead certainly made a great pairing with the images.

To call this film a horror movie seemed at first to me over the top in the first thirty or so minutes. But looking at the jerky character movements (prefiguring the use of stop motion for the same effect) and the way that the sound, image, and lighting combine to sear imagery in your brain, it can't be called anything else.

Technical prowess aside, the symbolism is paper thin, and I question if any images in this film are meant to have a meaning other than "this is some weird s*&t that I think will trip people out." I had a professor who told me once that dreams in fiction shouldn't make sense, and should have no meaning. Writers who include dream sequences often fail for use of overly symbolic interpretations that come off as desperate attempts to guide a character's action by providing a convenient subliminal revelation in the form of a dream. However, if you interpret this film as a surreal nightmare of industrialization and the subtext for the dissolution of every fiber of civilization that holds rational meaning...you'd probably still be wrong.

The film has parts that must surely entice a film student, and I submit that this is a film student's film, ripe for dissection of techniques and good for inspiring iconoclastic work. In terms of a Wednesday night Netflix watch, you might be hard pressed to make it through the first twenty minutes. If you do, beware, because I must have said in my head that I was turning it off every five minutes up until the credits, and you might want to psychologically prepare yourself for some unsettling imagery if you choose to stick it out through the end.

5/10: My vow to you: next time I see a woman with deformed cheeks singing and tap dancing in my radiator, I will definitely call a licensed repair worker immediately

The House of the Devil (2009)

The House of the Devil was promoted big time last year as the horror film to see. I heard comparisons to Eli Roth's Cabin Fever (2002) which I saw in theaters as a junior in college, and is possibly one of my favorite films of all time. I have to say, this film cashes in on the current (or, perhaps, ongoing for the last six to eight years) zeitgeist of 1980's nostalgia. I buy into that fad a lot, despite being, as my wife continually reminds me, too young to really remember most of the 80's. I was born in 1982, but I had two older brothers who were teenagers when I was a child, so I was probably exposed to more Def Leppard and die cast Ferrari models/A-Team episodes than the average 1980's child.

THotD takes place on a wintry college campus which looks eerily deserted, and for land grant university alums the opening scene where the protagonist babysitter, Samantha (Jocelin Donahue) drops a paper in an office mailbox will immediately evoke memories of turning in your last paper just before Christmas break. Samantha lives with a roommate that is much more concerned with some gym sock on the doorknob action with random dudes than washing any of her clothes or taking down messages, so she is hoping to find $300 quickly for her deposit on a new study pad free of roommate aggravation. Against the wishes of her best friend, she signs up for an odd type of babysitting gig for a creepy old man in the middle of nowhere. Sound hackneyed? It is. But the director, Ti West, is aware of this from the beginning and the tongue-in-cheek factor is off the charts. It's not a reductive, play with the horror movie conventions in a meta way film like Wes Craven's Scream (1996) for instance, but more like a carefully crafted tribute to the great B movies you rented from Dollar Video on Friday nights. I was hooked from the title scene of the movie, a freeze-frame, up-angle shot of Samantha with a smile on her face and ominous yellow title text in a typeface that looks like it was salvaged from a Vincent Price adaptation of a Poe story. Perfect.

Every detail of the film was carefully crafted to place you in the time period, while at once making you conscious that you are indulging in some period nostalgia along the way. The film is singular in execution, and definitely rates among the best that I have seen all summer. I'll say no more about the plot and twists, but the film is far more entertaining than you would imagine from the first twenty or thirty minutes.

9/10: Fire up your jiffy pop and grab a 7Up Gold out of the fridge

Update: I read a great piece on this film in Scott Tobias' "New Cult Cannon" which talks (with much more filmy expertise) on some of the conventions that Ti West is playing with in the film and the idea of nostalgia versus careful technique in crafting suspense in horror films.