Movie Recommendation of the Week: The Social Network

It always starts with a girl doesn't it?

How much is an idea worth?  How about a kernel of an idea? What about a friendship?  Those are just a few of the questions asked and to some degree answered in David Fincher’s new film, The Social Network, a quasi-historical account of the founding of Facebook.

I was skeptical when I first heard about this project for a number of reasons.  First of all these events barely qualify as capital “H”-history since they happened just seven years ago and the true impact of Facebook remains unknown (although there is an interesting scene where Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s anti-hero founder, is attending a lecture given by Bill Gates where he talks about the challenges of creating BASIC and you realize that in the internet age, Microsoft hails from an entirely different epoch than Facebook; the difference between the two isn’t so much Ford and Toyota as it is the horse-drawn carriage and BMW).  Second: how do you effectively dramatize a bunch of kids coding in their dorm rooms and sniping at each other through lawyers over intellectual property theft?  The answer in cheeky hindsight is that you get Aaron Sorkin to script it and David Fincher to direct.

Somehow this was more compelling than watching a guy age backwards--go figure.

Sorkin, perhaps best known for his work on the much lauded The West Wing (which I’ve never seen--an admission liable to get my liberal-pass revoked), springboarding from Ben Mezrich’s book, “The Accidental Billionaires” has crafted a beast of a script.  All the characters speak with the type of wit and humor that generally comes to us long after a conversation has ended if ever.  He sort of inverts the rule of less is more: why say in five words what you can say in fifty?  Most of the actors employ a rapid fire "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" delivery that keeps the film humming.  This technique gives the movie a kinetic verve that's quite impressive to behold (keep an ear out during the first meeting with Sean Parker: pure fireworks).     

The opening scene is the aural equivalent of Saving Private Ryan's brutal Omaha Beach invasion.  Jesse Eisenberg as Mark Zuckerberg hanging out with his soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend speaks with growing ardency about the infamous Harvard Final clubs, places that only allow the elite-est of the elite.  It soon escalates into a verbal sparring match that culminates in both sides launching volleys of insecurity-seeking missiles.  Later that night, the jilted Zuckerberg in a drunken hissy-fit creates a website that inadvertently leads to the creation of Facebook.

The film's perspective comes mainly from Eduardo Saverin, the somewhat hapless but well-intentioned co-founder of Facebook played with dewy-eyed innocence by Andrew Garfield.  We watch as he gets slowly excised from the increasingly lucrative enterprise after providing the seed money for Zuckerberg to get it off the ground.  If the film has a weakness, it's that it doesn't really take the time to establish how close he and Zuckerberg were before impending fame and fortune tore them apart.  From the outset Zuckerberg just treats him with so much passive-aggressive vindictiveness, we wonder why Saverin is friends with such an obvious tool.

Granted there are ungodly sums of money involved in the dispute, but the film does an excellent job of conveying the idea that it wasn't ultimately about the money.  After a certain point, tacking on zeroes becomes like gaining the high score in a video game: you’re just looking to distance yourself from the competition and leave them in awe of your prowess.  None of the film’s characters' great-grandchildren will ever have to worry about money, specifically the litigants who felt Zuckerberg screwed them over.

No what these people are fighting over is something beyond money.  Zuckerberg believes he’s invented something that will profoundly impact life in the 21st century.  He’s not thinking jackpot; he’s thinking legacy: Gates, Rockefeller, Ford, Vanderbilt, men who left an imprint on the world.  He starts off as a kid determined to infiltrate the exclusive social circles of the world’s most prestigious university.  Mark wants entree into the inner sanctum of the wealthy scions and aristocratic jocks for reasons never fully explored (validation? recognition? coolest parties?).  As he begins to realize the potential of Facebook, he sets his sights higher, much higher. 

Jesse Eisenberg deserves a ton of accolades for his portrayal of Zuckerberg.  He just looks physically tight as if he finds the world itself a constricting and discomforting place.  He only ever relaxes when sitting in front of a computer monitor.  You believe him as this awkward genius who despite his verbal dexterity is unable to connect with people in a normal way.  The cast is uniformly excellent, especially Armie Hammer who with some technical wizardry plays...ah, I don't wanna spoil it, but it's a nifty trick.

The real revelation here is Justin Timberlake.  While he’s never embarrassed himself on screen (he had some decent turns in Alpha Dog and Black Snake Moan, not to mention his stints on SNL), he’s also never threatened to hijack an entire movie as he does with his portrayal of Napster co-founder Sean Parker, the erstwhile Silicon Valley prodigy turned flameout.  Timberlake delivers an atropine shot to the film every time he’s on screen.  His Sean Parker is possessed of an almost preternatural charisma that ropes in the audience as much as it does Mark Zuckerberg.  As my friend said on the way out, "One day this guy is going to win an Oscar."  In the words of Antoine Dodson, "You can run and tell that!"

Of course you can't do a movie about Facebook without showing it.  Kudos to the filmmakers for how smoothly they managed to integrate it into the film.  There are a few scenes that rang pretty authentic to me like this exchange:
"How come your status is single on Facebook?"
"What? That's what it was when I started and I don't know how to change it!"
"You're telling me you're the CFO of Facebook and you don't know how to change your status?"
"Yes, you should look at that as a sign of trust that I'd even admit that to you!" 

At its core, The Social Network is about class and the upheaval the Zuckerbergs of the world are creating in the upper stratosphere.  He doesn't just represent "new money," but a sort of regime change.  There's a particularly cutting line of dialogue in the film where Zuckerberg is telling his lawyer that the blue blood twins who are suing him are only doing so because, "for the first time in their lives, things aren't going the way they want them to."  Individuals like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, Sergei Brinn and Larry Page--they are the new masters of the universe.  They control the gates now and they're letting they're friends inside.  And the old elite can't stand it.  At least that's what the movie seems to drive at.

The Social Network makes a perfect bookend with another film about American capitalism: P.T. Anderson's There Will Be Blood.  In Anderson's film the ferocious oilman Daniel Plainview embodied the ruthless spirit of early 20th century capitalism.  Zuckerberg isn't the 21st-century equivalent of Plainview, at least not in this film.  But as depicted on screen, he does embody a new class of entrepreneur, one for whom ideas are the most valuable commodity one can possess.  After all, the difference in form and function between say Myspace and Facebook is a matter of degree, but one is worth about ten times the other. 

It should be noted that the real-life Zuckerberg is probably a far more fascinating character than the fictionalized one.  Here's a kid who at twenty-three had a cold enough pokerface to not even bat an eyelash when Microsoft's Steve Ballmer offered $15 billion dollars for his company in 2007.  One day I hope to see a movie about that guy. Until then, The Social Network will more than suffice.

Extraneous thought, tangentially related: As a Facebook user, I kept thinking how the application had become a part of my life and that of my friends.  I’m still not sure what it is.  It’s as pervasive as the cell phone at this point and has probably done more to shift an entire generation’s views on privacy than anything else.  When people talk about Facebook, it's an organic thing integrated into their lives like television or Starbucks.  Several times in the movie, Zuckerberg and company talk about how they've invented this "cool thing," but have no idea what it will/can become.  I think we're all still trying to find that out.

Sweet Dreams are Made of This

Time to wake up, Mr. Cobb

The other night I dreamt that I was at Madison Square Garden attending a Coldplay (?!) concert. I found myself in line at a concession stand buying a hero. The total came to something like $18.25 (without a drink or fries!) and I gave the cashier a twenty. She told me that she didn’t have any change, so I started to take my order and head off. Then it struck me that on second thought I should just stick around until she served enough customers to get my dollar and change I was still owed. She didn’t take too kindly to this and became progressively more irritated as I kept hanging around. Of course I became more exasperated because I couldn’t understand her aggravation with me. I was owed the money after all. At some point I just decided to cut my losses and walk away before I missed any more of the beatific crooning of Chris Martin. Troubling stuff.

I only mention this to bring up a point about dreams: they can oftentimes be prosaic, comprised of the most banal details. Dreams don't have to be weird (although the more pedestrian the dream, the more perplexed I am by it). An obvious point no doubt, but I raise it because one of the bigger criticisms of Christopher Nolan's new film, Inception, is that he just doesn't get dreams. Sure he can explain concepts like dream-state temporal compression and the logistics of "inception", but he doesn't get that like dreams are strange, man.

Click pic to enlargify

I think the films detractors would have loved to see this material in the hands of say a David Lynch, Terry Gilliam or even David Cronenberg: all directors who embrace the fantastic, illogical and downright creepy aspects of the world both in and out of dreams. Nolan is too much of a structuralist to allow his dreamscapes to get messy. He's not one to color outside the lines. Some have a problem with that and to be fair it's completely understandable.  Yet that strikes me as an argument that refuses to address the film on its own terms.

I don’t think Nolan set out to make a treatise on the metaphysics of dreams or a meditation about the nature of reality. The film lacks enough ambiguous space for that to happen. More likely he endeavored to make a mature high-concept action film with some radical visuals. Nolan, best known for shepherding the triumphant revival of the Batman franchise is one of the most respected commercial directors working. His films are rigorously plotted and demand the viewers full attention. In short, he makes entertainment for grown-ups. Inception, harks back to the days when movies like Total Recall, Robocop and Aliens were standard summer fare. These were all smart action films that didn't pander to the lowest common denominator in order to inflate box office receipts. Sitting in a screening of Transformers 2, I had doubts whether such films would ever exist again in the mainstream.  I'm grateful that Inception even exists to be honest.

At its core, Inception is a heist film with a sci-fi skin graft. To compound the conceit, the object of value isn't being stolen, but implanted deep inside the mark's subconscious. If I were sitting in a bar and someone described Inception's plot, I'd probably be telling them how brilliant they were. As far as high-concepts go, this definitely gets an “A” for effort. I applaud the studio for having the stones to put a couple hundred million dollars behind Nolan's vision. Even with DiCaprio starring, on paper it doesn't exactly scream box office smash.  Nolan's ambition is unassailable.  It’s the execution where one finds room to quibble.

Click pic to embiggen

The film spends an inordinate amount of time setting up the third act. I can't say I was ever bored, but it raises the ante for the resolution of the main subplot, a subplot that doesn't have enough emotional resonance for the audience to be truly invested. That wasn't much of an issue for me, because I enjoyed spending time with Nolan's characters despite their lack of depth.  They reminded me of a more brainy and serious version of the Ocean 11's crew.  One thing I'm starting to notice about Nolan's characters through all his work is that there is a "what you see is what you get"-quality that has started to become problematic.  Ambiguity in a character creates space for tension.  Inception would have been greatly enhanced if the characters were a bit tougher to read.

Another gripe is that Nolan could have employed the soundtrack more judiciously. The score, constantly welling up in the background, doesn’t seem to complement the on-screen action so much as attempt to engineer an emotional response from the audience. Music pretty much always works this way in film, but when it’s as blatant as it is in Inception, it translates to flop sweat. It's as if the director doesn’t trust that his material is strong enough to stand alone. There is one clever little bit with respect to the music which involves Edith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien" and a portentous music cue that wells up occasionally throughout the film.  Nolan is a clever little devil, I'll give him that.

Nolan approaches his material deathly serious. This has been great for the Batman films since they had veered beyond the point of self-parody under Schumacher.  Still, I feel a bit of levity would have gone a long way in Inception.  The few moments we do get make the team feel more realized and less like vessels for Nolan's intricate plot.  Also I wish he’d cast someone else in the lead. DiCaprio is a decent enough actor given the right role (I found him pretty convincing in The Departed). Here he’s supposed to be conveying a man who’s been left debilitated by loss, emotionally compromised, a man who no longer trusts himself but still tries to project confidence and control. I think a Clive Owen or Ralph Fiennes, even Colin Farrell would have been more suited for such a part. DiCaprio is thirty-five, but his face still has a callowness that betrays any attempt at evincing the world-weariness that the story calls for. He just comes across as deeply annoyed or at best aloof most times. That said, he's not shabby in the role; he's just miscast.

The rest of the cast includes a couple of Nolan regulars, Michael Caine and Cilian Murphy. Murphy does great work here as the ambivalent scion of a dying energy magnate. His character's denouement ends up being the most effective in the film. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the guy who everybody should be hailing as the next great actor of his generation, does quality work here as DiCaprio's right-hand man.  Tom Hardy finds room to give his character a bit of soul despite being saddled with as much expository dialogue as anyone else.  Nolan knows how to cast a film.  It's just that the film ends up feeling less than the sum of its parts.

I don't want to sound as if I didn't like the film.  I thoroughly enjoyed it actually.  I'd rank it between The Prestige and The Dark Knight.  It's not the mind-f##% the first trailers seemed to promise, but it is a mature action film that takes great pains to respect its audience.  There's no shame in that.

100% Medically Accurate!

I didn't have high expectations going into Tom Six's "The Human Centipede". The trailer seemed to give away the film's macabre punch line. I figured it would be your run-of-the-mill low budget, poorly-acted, unintentionally hilarious horror film, albeit one with a novel but thoroughly demented premise. After viewing the film, I was shocked for a number of reasons.

Herr Doktor

Foremost, it's actually a decent and for a few stretches good movie. German actor Dieter Laser anchors the film with his portrayal of the Mengele-like Dr. Heiter. In every scene his lunacy percolates under the surface like a fever. From his unblinking gaze to his slow and deliberate movements, his demeanor screams "I am not sane." Well that and his fetish for stitching mammals together via their gastro-intestinal tracts.

As ripe for pornographic exploitation as the film's premise is, I was happily surprised at how restrained the film turned out to be. There is blood and viscera, but the film never crosses into "Two Girls, One Cup"-level scatological licentiousness. In fact, the one scene where the logistics of the "human centipede" are depicted, any revulsion is generated from the viewer's own imagination. But that seems to be the lesson that most good horror moviemakers have learned: what I conjure in my head whether in anticipation or as it happens is infinitely scarier and more disturbing than what you can show me on-screen.

I've seen some reviews categorize the film as "torture porn," along the lines of Eli Roth's "Hostel" or any number of chop-the-girl-up-in-creative-ways flicks that have come into fashion lately. I'd disagree that "The Human Centipede" falls into this category. There is misogyny, fetishism of violence and a general nihilistic misanthropy-thing going on, but these all seem like expressions of the antagonist's insanity than a cynical ploy from the director. Director Tom Six seems more interested in ramping up the anxiety in his audience to unbearable levels and for the most part he succeeds.

The movie starts out in typical genre fashion with two girls stranded in the woods who come across an eccentric loner. There is subtle humor in the opening scenes. It stems from the soon-to-be-victims being utterly unperceptive to the signals that their host is unbalanced. Six does a good job of disarming the viewer here. The tonal shift is jarring after herr doctor captures his prey and the audience finds itself on edge from there on out.

Six then proceeds to guide us through some heretofore unrevealed circle of Hell and strands us there. The post-modern austerity of Dr. Heiter's home makes for a perfect mousetrap with its seemingly endless identical doors and antiseptic white walls. The audience is left feeling perpetually mortified and helpless as our protagonists try their best to persevere their collective nightmare. Don't look for a ladder at the end either.

Trust me. You don't wanna know.

The films biggest missteps are the leaps in logic that the characters undertake which many horror films succumb to; at a few pivotal junctures, the characters behave in a way that blinkers reason in order to advance the plot (sort of like how lazy rom-com screenwriters rely on the "big misunderstanding" almost without fail in the second act). This dunderheadedness doesn't break the film, but it does detract from what is otherwise a well-crafted psychological torture film.

The film is subtitled "First Sequence" and according to IMDB, the sequel will be out next year. I can't imagine revisiting the universe that director Tom Six has created with this film and most likely won't. However, this one will earn (well-deserved) cult status and will probably be a midnight staple at art houses for years to come. I'm not sure what conclusions one should draw about humanity from this.

(P.S. - I am don't know what's more shocking about this film: the fact that director Tom Six conceived the idea of surgically chaining humans together like linking logs or that nobody thought of it before.)

Movie Recommendation of the Week

THIS MOVIE WILL EFF YOU UP FOR LIFE! Sorry, I always loved that tag-line. It's from one of the gonzo adverts in the under-appreciated Dudley Moore vehicle Crazy People. I became curious to see this film after I got wind of its unconventional promotional campaign. The website asked fans to demand the movie get distribution in their town via an on-line petition. I bit and lo and behold the movie got itself into regular rotation at a few theaters.

I can say that clicking through the petition's links was time well spent. The film is a gem. I applaud the director Oren Peli on performing a remarkable feat of guerilla filmmaking.

The story behind this film is almost as good as the movie itself. Shot for a ridiculously miniscule amount of money ($15K), director/writer Oren Peli made the film in his own house over a one week period (plus a year of prepping his house for the shoot). Peli also had no formal film school training (according to wikipedia). I'll just copy and paste the rest of the story from the wiki:

After the film was finished, Peli signed with the Creative Artists Agency. They screened the movie in 2007 at the Screamfest Horror Film Festival and, as a result, began to give away DVDs to anybody who would be willing to distribute it. It didn't see a spotlight until 2007 when Miramax Films Senior Executive Jason Blum and his producing partner, Steven Schneider, viewed the movie for themselves. Working with Blum, Peli edited the film down so that it ran tighter and smoother but more problems arose: Sundance Film Festival would not accept the film and even though the Slamdance Film Festival did, no distributor picked up the movie for major distribution.

In 2008, the DVD ended up at DreamWorks and was viewed by Production Executive Ashley Brooks. Brooks was so impressed by the movie that she "pestered" her boss, Production Chief Adam Goodman, every day to see the film until he eventually saw it. Goodman, in turn, brought it to his boss, Studio Chief Stacey Snider. They were impressed by the film as well and handed the DVD to Steven Spielberg, who took it home to watch.

In a strange twist, Spielberg allegedly returned to DreamWorks the next day with the DVD in a "garbage bag" because he thought the DVD was "haunted". According to Spielberg, minutes after he viewed the film, his bedroom doors "locked by themselves" and he couldn't get out without calling in a locksmith.[8][9] Despite this, Spielberg loved the movie and helped to greenlight a remake to be produced by Jason Blum and directed by Oren Peli again. "They didn't know what to do with [the movie]," Blum stated about the remake, adding that they just wanted to be "in business" with Peli.

The original deal for the movie stipulated that Oren Peli would direct and that the DVD would have the original film included with it so the public would get an idea of what the original film was about. However, during contract negotiations, Blum and Peli negotiated a one-time screening into the contract to see how a real audience would react to the original film. As part of the deal, Adam Goodman invited several screenwriters to the screening so that they could get an idea about what to write and see what should be added and subtracted to the remake's script.

During the screening, viewers began to walk out of the theater. Goodman was afraid that he made the wrong decision and that the screening was a bomb until he learned (in a twist reminiscent of the famous screening of 1979's Alien) that the viewers were actually truly frightened by the film. It was at this point that Goodman canned all thoughts of a Hollywood remake and decided to release Peli's version of the film.[8]
The film was supposed to be released in 2008 but was delayed further because of the rift between DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures. While the movie was stuck in limbo, Oren Peli and Jason Blum screened the film for international buyers at a theater in Santa Monica along with a sold-out crowd mostly of teenagers. This further cemented the film's reputation and Peli and Blum sold the international rights to 52 different countries.

The buzz generated by this and the positive word-of-mouth finally pushed Adam Goodman (who took over as Paramount's main exec) to release the film on the fall schedule.

I read a lot of reviews touting how downright scary the movie is. I unfortunately didn't find that to be the case, but it was a really funny film with some effective creep-out scenes. The conceit of the film (that we're just watching discovered amateur video; in this case a normal South Californian couple, one of whom happens to have a lifelong demonic tormentor) isn't new. The Blair Witch Project most famously utilized this gimmick to stellar results (nearly $250 million worldwide plus ancillary sales). Now a lot of people have come to view that film in a negative light. I for one was genuinely freaked the hell out by that movie. (I used to deliver papers and my route took me through the backwoods of Ann Arbor; good times.) I think that the backlash in that case was due to people exclaiming how "$#!t your pants"-scary TBWP was. So, I can understand people's reaction once they actually saw it. It can be a bit of a letdown if you're expecting the next The Exorcist. So I'll just say this movie has some good scares in it, but it's really just thoroughly entertaining.

The acting never takes you out of the film. You might call it amateurish, but it honestly just felt like two normal people dealing with a rapidly deteriorating situation. The screenplay only strikes a couple of false notes (I didn't really buy the reason they keep staying in the house), but I love the slow burn it employs. The one scene that keeps getting repeated numerous times (the fixed-angle shot of the couple sleeping) becomes more and more intense as the "paranormal activity" continues to build. The film knows how to work an audience. It also relies on the one truth that any horror-master worth his salt knows: the human mind will conjure things far scarier than anything you can actually show.

The real joy of this film comes in watching it with a crowd (one highly saturated with teenage girls would be optimal). I usually don't like unsolicited crowd participation, but in this case a good crowd really heightens the effect. I can honestly say I've never seen a crowd react so viscerally to on-screen proceedings. People were screaming, yelling at the screen and literally jumping out of their seats. It turned out to be contagious. Even though I wasn't really frightened, I did get the jumpsies.

So go to a midnight screening and for once embrace the teenagers. I knew they would come in handy some day.

(Unexpected) Movie Recommendation of the Month

Dreamworks take note: this is how you make an animated film that competes with Pixar (or at least doesn't embarrass itself trying). I had no intention to see this movie, but my girlfriend is a 1st-grade teacher, so I guess it was inevitable. I was not in the greatest mood either after having to trek down to the lobby twice in order to get the prerequisite 3-D glasses necessary to watch the movie without developing a migraine. Our ticket-taker neglected to hand them to us despite the box being directly behind her and the theater not being particularly busy. Then when I came back downstairs sans ticket, she told me I needed the ticket in order to get the glasses. You know because people like taking cheap 3-D glasses for no reason save for how kewl they look. Why must it always be so difficult?

Anyways, the film managed to lighten my mood considerably. Bill Hader provides the voice of Flint, the somewhat hapless inventor in the small town/island of Swallow Falls (located under the 'A' in 'Atlantic Ocean' on the map). I didn't even realize it was Hader until the credits. Between this and his dead-on James Carville on SNL a while back, he's really starting to impress me. (Another note to Dreamworks: actually employ voice talent based on talent, and not just how famous the actual voice is, mmkay?) James Caan voices Tim, Flint's Luddite father who spends most of the film disapproving of Flint's work with his demonstrative furrowed brow. The film also employs the under-appreciated comedic talents of Anna Faris (if she were a guy she'd be as successful as Seth Rogen by now; there is no justice!). Plus there's Andy Samberg, Bruce Campbell and Mr. T (!). Really impressive line-up to say the least.

The plot is pretty straight-forward with Flint inventing a device that turns water into food and accidentally launching it into the atmosphere. This in turn makes Swallow Falls the most sought after tourist destination in the world. Of course things go awry as the machine goes haywire from over-use. The movie takes its time to flesh out the relationships between the characters, especially the one between Flint and his father which is central to the film. We also get a nice romantic angle with Faris's somewhat ditzy (but secretly brainy) Sam Sparks. One of the most memorable scenes involves a reversal of the cliched "girl takes off glasses and lets down her hair, turns out to be stunning"-routine seen in countless stories since Hans Christian Anderson picked up a pen.

The movie does get all action-adventure-y in the 3rd act, but I didn't mind. It didn't feel as if the transition was unwarranted. It fit with the story well enough. Also I liked how most of Flint's past failed inventions popped up again for a bit of redemption. Some real thought went into this project. This adaptation couldn't really rely on the book for its narrative or so I've been told. So much credit to the creative team behind the film (I loved how the film opens with the credit "A film by a lot of people").

Let's be clear: this does not match up to Pixar in top gear (i.e. Wall-E, Nemo, Up or Ratatouille). But it's miles beyond the execrable Shrek sequels. I'd put it right up there with Toy Story 2, maybe a bit above. Definitely above say Cars. Either way, Sony should definitely be proud of this. It won't do anywhere near as well as the Ice Age franchise (I guess you can't compete with prehistoric mammals, who knew?), but artistically this is revelatory for a non-Pixar film. Expectations have been raised.

TIFF '09 Day Quattro

Fun Fact: Corn Pops in Canada is a completely different product than Corn Pops in the states. I found this out late one night after a Midnight Madness screening. I bought one of those single-serve cereal bowls and much to my surprise found a cereal with a completely different texture and taste. The domestic version of Corn Pops is more of a air-puffed sweet nugget with a popcorn-like lightness and consistency. The Canadian version has the look and feel of a glossy sugar-coated Kix pellet. It's not bad, but I much prefer the American version. Perhaps I should submit this information to a travelogue.

But I digress. So what munificent bounty did the final day of movie-watching yield? Let's see...


The Men Who Stare At Goats – I feel as if I should have enjoyed this movie more than I did. It’s smartly written and really well-acted. Yet, I found it only intermittently funny and somewhat scattershot. Ewan McGregor, George Clooney, Jeff Bridges and Kevin Spacey. You couldn’t really ask for a better cast. There were a few meta-jokes involving discussions of Jedi Knights that were pretty funny.

McGregor plays a small college-town journalist (Ann Arbor!) who heads out to Iraq to experience war, find purpose and perhaps win back his ex-wife (she leaves him for his editor in a slightly amusing subplot). Instead he meets Clooney who is an ex-special operations soldier trained in "psychic warfare." At first McGregor's Bob Wilton dismisses him as a nut, but slowly he begins to buy into some of what Clooney's eccentric Lyn Cassady is selling. It's sort of a road movie as we follow the pair across the Iraqi desert on what Cassady swears is a super-secret mission. We also get flashbacks to his training under Jeff Bridges' New Age-y Bill Django who somehow gets the military to fund his bizarre operation. The film reminded me of Three Kings with its subversive take on the military. The final act ties the film to one of the most controversial political issues of the day, torture, but it doesn't really spend to much time dwelling on its revelations. It's understandable since that would have made it an entirely different film. Still it would have been nice if they would have gone deeper into that territory. Still recommended.


Valhalla Rising – The dude from Adam’s Apples (nifty film that I can’t recommend highly enough) and Casino Royale plays One-eye (most likely an incarnation of Odin; thanks to Neil Gaiman I know more than I probably should about Norse gods), a mute warrior who is really handy with a hand-axe. I was unfamiliar with the director’s work, but he’s fairly established. The film has a lot of slow-motion camerawork accompanied by ominous and portentous music, but not much really happens. It actually reminded me of Aguirre the Wrath of God, the Werner Herzog film set in the Amazon with an inimitable Klaus Kinsky performance. Man that guy was intense. Anyways, this film is all about atmosphere and it does have a haunted feel to it. I just wish there'd have been more of a narrative going on. As it stands you get an interesting depiction of Christian Vikings (does that make sense?) coming to the New World and getting their arses handed to them.


The Warrior and the Wolf – This movie should have been called The Warrior and the Rapist. The film has an odd three act structure in that none of the acts feel interrelated. We start with the story of a reluctant soldier, a gentle soul who’d rather tend to his flock than fight in a war. A general has taken a liking to him and keeps trying to convince him to join his army. The guy finally agrees and becomes an officer, I think. There are so many flashbacks and flash-forwards, it's hard to keep up.

We then shift to the reluctant military officer leading the (apparently fatally wounded) general's troops home from the front lines after a defeat at the hands of some unnamed enemy (they look like Mongols). On the way, the troops hold up for the winter in a Harran village (the Harran's are depicted as a kind of primitive tribe living in the mountains). The guy finds a Harran woman played by Maggie Q living in a secret passage in the hut. After he catches her the first time, they struggle for a bit until he sees some of her exposed leg and then pounces. And when I say pounce, I mean it. She resists, but he forces himself on her and towards the end of his transgression, she starts to relent. (You know how it is, sometimes these b!tc#es don’t know what they want ‘til you give it to ‘em. Am I right? Hunh, hunh?) The scene didn’t sit very well with me to say the least. If it had just been him taking her against her will, then okay, within the context of the time period and the circumstances it’s deplorable but realistic. My issue was that she falls in love with him after the fourth or fifth time this happens. And this scene replays itself numerous times in the same lurid fashion. I noticed several walkouts and I can only assume they had the same objections as I did.

The third act is short and somewhat surreal. The general who seemed to die at the end of the first act returns only to have some of his men killed by wolves (wolves who happen to be his old lieutenant and his raped-into-submission-lover). Then the general tries to kill the wolves and the former soldier-turned-wolf can’t fight back because it’s his old friend, but the general ends up dying anyway as the she-wolf eviscerates him when he attacks her lover. I would have been interested to talk to Maggie Q about her decision to take this role. I also would have liked to talk to the director about his choice to depict such a thoroughly repulsive love story. I wouldn’t have been surprised if these questions were raised during the Q&A, but I just didn’t have the patience to stick around once the lights went up. Not recommended.

So all in all, it was a pretty good year at TIFF. I would have liked to stay longer as there were some great films showing later in the week, but most will be out eventually so no real loss. As always, the city was beautiful and welcoming. My only complaint is that the dollar just keeps getting weaker. They were actually doing me a favor accepting U.S. currency on a 1-1 basis. Wow.

TIFF '09 Day San

The City of Life and Death – You know you’re in for a downer of a movie when one of the most sympathetic characters is a Nazi. Lu Chuan’s The City of Life and Death depicts one of the most sensitive episodes in modern Asian history, the fall of Nanking.

Americans hear very little about the Pacific Theater until our own involvement following the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. Prior to the film, I was vaguely familiar with Sino-Japanese relations during the early 20th century. I knew they'd fought but not the specifics of those wars. I’d heard the phrase “the rape of Nanking” on occasion and perhaps had read a brief bit on it, but not enough to prepare me for this film. The film opens with the Japanese siege of Nanking as thousands of Chinese soldiers begin to abandon the lost city. A small contingent stays behind to mount one final wave of resistance against the advancing Japanese. After a brief but valiant effort, the remaining Chinese soldiers are rounded up and summarily executed. These executions are shown in brutal detail and are all harrowing to watch. Live burnings and burials, repeated bayonetting, mowing down thousands with heavy machine gun fire, you name it. The Japanese seemed to revel in how many ways they could liquidate their captives. After the remnants of the Chinese army are disposed of, the Japanese soldiers begin indiscriminately killing civilians, mostly men, some children. Then things get really bad.


A group of international aide workers (its never really clear who they work for—the patches on their arms seemed to suggest the Red Cross) has gathered many of the city’s remaining residents in a “safe zone” under the protection of a Nazi businessman, John Rabe (historical figure). The trouble begins when Japanese soldiers begin raping young girls inside the “safe zone.” The military leaders initially apologize for the offense, but you soon realize not only are they insincere, but they have perhaps encouraged their soldiers to behave in such a way.

It only gets worse as they begin demanding women be turned over to act as “comfort women” for the Japanese soldiers. There is one Japanese serviceman with a shred of conscience whom we follow through the film, Kadokawa. He seems to be the only honorable Japanese person in the film (there's also a Japanese prostitute whom he falls in love with who is a pretty blameless if pathetic character). Even so, the director took criticism for showing any sympathetic Japanese characters. It’s like having a sympathetic Nazi in a Holocaust movie. (I don’t believe there was one in Schindler’s List). Not saying this is necessary, but it makes the movie more bearable for the viewer to at least indulge in the speculation that there were soldiers who actively disapproved of what was going on. It was also a brave choice on the director’s part.

The movie does not hold back in showing the atrocities of the Japanese army. Many of the events depicted were grounded in fact and the recollection of survivors so I don’t doubt the authenticity (interesting to note that just like Holocaust deniers, there are "Rape of Nanking"-deniers as well). It’s a lot to absorb though. It’s the kind of film that gives me doubts about humanity. Whenever I see films that depict some of the darkest moments in modern human history such as the Holocaust or Rwandan genocide, I just wonder: “how can people act this way?” It raises the uncomfortable idea that within all of us is the capacity to rape or murder or dehumanize another person almost completely. It’s really quite frightening. Other things I left the movie eager to find out about were: how did the Chinese end up revering Lenin, what caused the Sino-Japanese War and how did the Chinese lose so badly? Highly recommended.


Triage – Why isn’t Colin Farrell more appreciated as an actor? The guy is good. Really good. Triage tells the story of a couple of war photographers capturing the escalating hostilities in Kurdistan between Kurdish rebels and Iraqi forces. Farrell's Mark wants to go deeper into the front lines of the war, while his best friend and fellow photojournalist, David (Jamie Sives doing a great job communicating how war can get to even the non-combatants) is ready to bounce altogether (his wife is expecting their first child). Bad things happen, but we don't find out exactly what until much later in the film. The movie does a great job of evoking a sense of foreboding in the audience. We know this can't end well when Mark returns home without David after the two get separated in Kurdistan. In the meantime we watch as Farrell's character continues to show the debilitating effects of war on the human psyche. Enter Christopher Lee as the retired psychoanalyst who helps Farrell and us get to the bottom of the mystery and his growing misery. I also loved this film because Christopher Lee gets to remind us that a.) he’s still alive and b.) he’s a hell of an actor. I hope this film gets distribution stateside. It's not going to be many people's first choice for a night at the movies, but it's worth two hours of your time.


Survival of the Dead – I think George Romero needs to take a break from making zombie movies. I think this is his sixth one? The ideas are just getting threadbare at this point. And if I have to sit through yet another zombie movie where somebody gets infected and we have to watch while the person slowly deteriorates and has to be ‘Old Yeller'ed’, blecch. This one takes place mostly on an island as a group of military deserters turned bandits take sides in a feud between two old Irish clans. The basis of the feud not only seems irrelevant, but halfway through the film one side seems to abandon the principles that lead to the fighting to begin with. I just stopped caring after a while. I thought Diary of the Dead had its moments and was an interesting angle with the whole ‘new media’ stuff. This just feels like a lark.

TIFF '09 Day Deux

One of the little things that I always notice when I'm in Toronto is the pedestrian crossing signal. The Lite-Brite man looks so confident in his stride, no hint of the slight trepidation apparent in the posture of his American counterpart. I finally figured out why that is: universal health care! You see, the Canuck doesn't care if he gets hit by some reckless driver. There's no chance he'll lose his house or face financial ruin due to exorbitant medical costs. Of course he can walk across the street with that cocksure strut. Pinko bastard...

Ahem, back to the films, yes?

Day 2 of the festival was pretty light viewing, only two films.


The first was a Filipino film, an earnest little movie called If I Knew What You Said about a rebellious young girl who reluctantly befriends a deaf kid at a camp. The film feels competently shot most of the time. It looks like it was shot on DV which added to the somewhat amateurish feel of the production. Actually it felt like something that might play as an ABC Afterschool Special. There was an interesting part showing how the deaf kids learned to dance to music they couldn't technically hear. Also I found myself intrigued at how easily the characters went back and forth from Tagalog to English. Other than that, I couldn't really recommend it. Still glad I saw it though.

Daybreakers, the second Midnight Madness film turned out to be much better than I ever expected. I'd watched the Spierig brothers first film, Undead on the dearly departed Monsters HD. It was decent enough with a dash of quirky humor. Didn't really give any clue that they would be capable of this.


The world of Daybreakers is one where vampires outnumber the human population to the point where the vampires fear humans may go extinct. This is causing the dominant vampire society (which is practically identical to our own w/r/t social/economic structures) to become unstable. It's also causing undo stress to our protagonist, Ethan Hawke, who is working nights and pulling all-dayers in order to perfect a blood substitute. Hawke's vampire hematologist also has a conscience and refuses to taste human blood, preferring to sustain himself on animals instead. He not only wants to find a blood substitute but save humankind from being cattle. Of course, there are others who have different plans. Sam Neill gives a great turn as the corporate reptile employing Hawke who wants to preserve not only the vampire way of life but his own economic fortunes.

What so impressed me about the film was all the little details that the Spierig brothers managed to cram into the picture. Their vampire world doesn't feel so much like a fantastical concoction as the natural and plausible result of their deceptively clever scenario. I sat there never doubting the world they'd created. The film doesn't overdo it on the action, nor does it try to shoehorn in any unnecessary love interests. It just handles its business.

Oh, and I forgot to mention it has a kick-@$$ Willem Dafoe element to it.

Every time I think the vampire genre is dead, that there's no more juice in that turnip, something like Daybreakers happens. I'm not complaining. I'll probably pay to see this again.

Toronto: TIFF Day 1

Back in the USSR! (Sorry, been hearing Beatles music everywhere with the new Rock Band and everything I suppose.) I was reading this profile of Michael Ignatieff in The New Yorker and the author gave an elegant analogy that perfectly articulated the philosophy of Canada, the beliefs I have such an affinity towards: "No man is an island, and rules made for imaginary islands ignore the fragile ecology of the actual archipelago. We are people who live in communities and our sense of who we are derives from what the people around us are like." Take that Libertarianism!

Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be talking about films.

This year I have ten, maybe twelve films I plan to see. This is pretty light for me, about half of the usual. Still this should be enough to slake my cinema jones for a while. It's been a quiet movie-going year for me. The best film I've seen all year was Let The Right One In and that came out last year. So I'm looking for Toronto to be a barometer as to how '09 will end. The pre-fest buzz has been good, but we'll see how things shake out. Either way, there's always Mad Men.

Thursday began with a plane ride where I got the chance to listen to a gaggle of journalists talk shop. Film criticism seems like a nice gig if you can get it, but I can't say I found their world too enticing. I'd much rather stay on this side of the wall. Movies are a passion, but I wouldn't want to think of viewing films as work. Saps all the fun out of the entire enterprise. I will say you'd be hard-pressed to find a chef with a set of knives sharper than a film critic's.

I ended up seeing two films today. The first was Pedro Almodovar's Broken Embraces starring Penelope Cruz. It's only the third film I've seen by him (the other two were Volver and Talk to Her). I really enjoy the worlds Almodovar creates. You could watch his characters interact with each other for hours. They are all fairly layered; their motivations complex. Even the bad guys aren't really all that bad; they're just human.

Penelope Cruz gives a good performance as the woman who makes a deal with a devil of sorts (who you really can't blame save for one incident) and tries to renege for a chance at true love. Lluis Homar has a more challenging role which he executes with aplomb. His Mateo Blanco is the portrait of a man humbled by loss but not broken. Almodovar imbues him with a wry sense of humor that I especially enjoyed. The plot is full of more twists than a soap opera; it has melodrama entwined in its DNA. And there's nothing wrong with that. The film toys with being absurd at times, but Almodovar is very assured here. He knows exactly how to string us along. I found myself enthralled from the opening frame through to the credits.

I was also happy that the film didn't feel constrained by genre. It presents itself as a mystery--a murder mystery to be exact. But that's not what it delivers and I was actually grateful for that. Such a structure presents life as some puzzle that can be solved--event X happens because of action Y--when real life is usually far more random and more maddening. Almodovar's films all seem to capture the messiness of life--especially when it comes to love. Highly recommended.



The second film was Jennifer's Body, the second screenplay from Juno-scribe, Diablo Cody. The film stars most notably Megan Fox who gets to do more than just straddle motorcycles in demeaning sexpot poses (thanks again, Michael Bay!). If you didn't care for Juno's chock-full-of-pop-refs-and-elaborate-putdowns dialogue, then you should just avoid this film altogether. Horror junkies will not find a fix here. The scares are tepid and the gore if not exactly restrained, then unremarkable. Still I enjoyed the flick. I laughed enough at some of the so-hip-it-hurts dialogue. I like Cody's sense of humor. I mean the plot alone is genius: mediocre alt-rock band tries to sacrifice a virgin to Satan so they can be somebodies "like the lead singer from Maroon 5"; only she's impure and becomes a half-demon feasting on the high school boys.

Amanda Seyfried and Adam Brody give solid performances. Seyfried plays the mousy "Needy" who slowly learns the truth about her best friend and has to overcome her fierce loyalty to end the carnage. Brody's part is short but sweet as a wannabe rockstar, virgin-sacrificing tool. Megan Fox gives a workmanlike performance that doesn't really make me suspect any great things will come from her as an actress in the future, but doesn't make me write her off altogether either. On a side note, she's super-skinny in person, I hope she's healthy at least; I hate that this is what Hollywood puts out as the quintessence of beauty . The star of this film though is the script. It's Juno with bloodletting (minus the heart as well) which isn't a bad thing. It's about what I expected to be honest. Diablo Cody catches a lot of flack for her work, but I like her self-creation and knack for publicity. How many screenwriters are known by name in Hollywood these days? So bully for her I say.



So far, so good. Two solid films to open the festival. There is nothing like watching a movie with a festival crowd. If regular crowds were like it, I'd go to the movies a lot more often. No crying babies, no talking during the movie, no cellphones, no texting...just sitting back and enjoying the show. The way it should always be.

Movie Recommendation of the Month

Why does the vampire myth endure? Vampires or something approximating them have been with us since before the advent of Christ. Putting vampires on film is almost as old as the motion pictures themselves. The archetype for the modern vampire is of course Bram Stoker’s Dracula, a book I should probably read someday. Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles facilitated my earliest and deepest forays into vampire lore. Before she became born-again, Rice was one of my favorite writers. She could spin a tale replete with its own intricate mythology that left you marveling at the breadth and depth of it all. She was my J.K. Rowling. Interview with a Vampire, The Vampire Lestat and Queen of the Damned were some of my favorite books as a teenager. After college I got hip to Buffy the Vampire Slayer (second greatest show of all time behind The Wire; I can prove this empirically), but after the first two seasons that really wasn’t much about vampires. But I digress.

Back to the question: why do vampires still intrigue us? For my money, vampires are the perfect monster. In most incarnations they are always just slightly inhuman in appearance, many times too perfect, ageless and unchanging. You could write a dissertation on the symbolic importance of blood and drinking blood and then you throw sex into the mix. Oy. The vampire can represent almost anything you want and that’s what makes it such a great template to work with. As long as you adhere to a few rules, you can write a vampire story that’s a metaphor for whatever the heck you want.


Enter “Let the Right One In”, a Swedish vampire movie about the horrors of adolescence, the beguiling nature of love and of course preying on humans. Oskar a delicate blond boy in both features and temperament spends his days getting bullied at school and his nights fantasizing about revenge upon his tormentors. Eli is the strange girl who has just moved next door and has a habit of hanging out on the frozen bars of the Jungle Jim in her pajamas oblivious to the cold. After a couple of awkward interactions, the two become fast friends. The movie’s plot isn’t especially suspenseful or thrilling (although there are genuine heartbeat-raising moments). What drew me in was the relationship between Oskar and Eli. It felt so natural. The child-actors do an excellent job. Oskar's vulnerability masked beneath his aloofness and Eli's loneliness buried just beneath her lone wolf posturing are both communicated beautifully.

The movie does set-up some interesting mysteries. Who is the man who seems to be Eli’s father? Does Eli truly love Oskar? Is she capable? Her character is morally ambiguous. She seems to have some compunction about killing, but then she just lets other people do it for her. She’s more than capable of securing her own food and perhaps doing a much better job of it, so why the need for a surrogate? How old is she? At one point she states, “I am twelve. But I’ve been twelve for a long, long time.” One wonders is she still emotionally twelve as well? It is clear that she manipulates Oskar, but how different is this from any other twelve year old? Also the question of sexuality is left lingering as Eli tells Oskar more than once that she is not a girl. Does she just mean that she is a vampire and therefore lacks gender or is "she" really a "he"? The movie lets this go unresolved even teasing us with a shot in the film that leaves the question even more open-ended (apparently in the novel upon which the movie is based, this point is made explicitly clear). There is also an abundance of ambiguous sexuality going on. Almost every male character is at some point implied to be gay or at least bisexual. It’s an odd touch but one that creates an undercurrent that colors how viewers interpret the film.

The cinematography enhances the film even further: drab utilitarian structures that make up the scenery all set against the stark snow and ice backdrop plus the alternating sun-bleached and purple midnight skies, all of it creates a sort of sensory deprivation for the viewer. Taken altogether, it's unlike any horror film I've ever seen. I'm not sure that's even the proper designation.

Much to my chagrin, an American remake is in the works. I can only imagine that they'll butcher the film, removing some of the more subversive elements to make it more palatable for American audiences. Do yourself a favor and just rent the DVD. Also respect the actors: watch it with the subtitles.

It Takes a Lot of Effort to Make It Look So Effortless

Pixar continues to evolve. I really expected a letdown after the masterful Wall-E. I would have forgiven Pixar if Up had been a lesser film. But no these guys refuse to relent. Here's the most successful U.S. animation studio both commercially and artistically of the new century and they are still willing to try things that their rivals wouldn't even begin to think about. What other studio would be brazen enough to attempt to include (let alone integrate into a single project) the following in what is ostensibly a kid’s film: a septuagenarian hero; a scene depicting a woman’s infertility and her subsequent emotional recovery from said; a funeral? Exactly what is Up? A kid's film about loss, letting go and embracing non-traditional ideas of family. Yeah, maybe Dreamworks will touch on some of these themes in Shrek 4.

Even if the film turned out to be a disaster, I'd give them props for the attempt. Luckily, it's nowhere near that. Instead it's a minor masterpiece with some of the most sumptuous visuals ever seen in a computer-animated film. It doesn't even need the state-of-the-art visuals, because these guys just know how to tell a story. Almost from the opening sequence, you can tell how much the creators care about their creations. There's more character development in the first five minutes of Up than in the entire bloated two-and-a-half plus hours of TF2. The film never resorts to cheap scatological humor which is rare these days for, well, almost any film with comedy in it, animated or otherwise. It earns its moments. Sure it's emotionally manipulative, but all works of fiction are. That's the point. It's just with the best ones, you don't notice.

Still for all the accolades critics have almost universally heaped upon Pixar, I still think they have room to grow. I don't think they've made a film that matches the limitless inventiveness and bravura display of imagination embodied in Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. But that's a good thing. It gives me something to look forward to.

Movie Recommendation--Sorta

Hancock is not a good movie, per se. I do think it's an interesting failure worth viewing. The film starts off well enough with an interesting premise that gets explored for roughly a half-hour before the plot throws a curve-ball. It could have worked, but the movie tries to shoehorn everything into 90 minutes, thus giving short shrift to the complexities of the situation as presented.

One of the mysteries the movie puts out there is the origin of Hancock. As an amnesiac, Will Smith's anti-hero (if you can even call him that) struggles with questions of identity. Great, I can roll with that. When we finally find out who he is, the why's and wherefore's, I was a bit surprised at the subtext the writer weaved into it. It was bold, but that also made it problematic. The issue with Hancock's origin reveal is that the film isn't constructed in a way to support the weight of it. Nothing that precedes it suggests that the film will aspire to anything more than your typical lightweight action flick. I actually found Charlize Theron's monologue in which she explained Hancock to himself quite moving, but it belonged in a better movie.

I hear a sequel is a possibility. Perhaps the creative team involved can make good on the potential the concept holds.

Michael Bay is the Future

At the time of this post, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen has grossed approximately $310 $364 million dollars domestically and an additional $326 $383 million dollars in foreign box office. Less than a month into its run, that puts it at #26 #13 and #36 #28 for all-time unadjusted gross, domestic and worldwide respectively. It will undoubtedly move up a number of slots before its run is completed. It’s plausible inevitable the film could will break into the top ten, domestically speaking. I’ve concluded from this that Michael Bay’s career may be the strongest case against democracy the world has ever known.

Michael Bay. He is the proverbial scorpion on the back of the frog. He makes us complicit in the death of our own good taste. Bay acts as a pop cultural Satan who gets us to lower our standards just a tiny fraction each time out. And what do we do? We drop a few more coins in his palm and smiling glassy-eyed ask him to do it again.

I remember going to see Armageddon over a decade ago at the behest of a friend who was a great admirer of both Bad Boys and The Rock. After the film he turned to me with a grin and started laughing almost with tears in his eyes and then summed up his feelings on that film with a slew of invectives. I'll admit I thought the film was serviceable with a few moments of inspired lunacy (space madness? lifetime income tax exemptions?). Little did I know I was only encouraging Bay to continue. Years later I had the misfortune of watching Bad Boys 2 which I found not just crude in its execution but racially offensive which is no minor feat since one of the leads was Will Smith (I'm recalling the scene where this kid comes to take Martin Lawrence's daughter out on a date--Roger Ebert makes special note of it in his review). I caught his film The Island on DVD, I think. I found it to be his least offensive film. It was nonetheless a mediocre effort marred with Bay’s signature desultory chases and explosions. The man doesn't seem to strive to make films so much as cinematic energy drinks.


I don’t mean to say he is without talent. He at the very least has an eye. You could take stills from a number of his films that would rival the work of Annie Leibovitz. Bay is an auteur without question. I would call his particular style Brutalism (apologies to any architects). He assails the viewer with a wearying combination of visual and aural concussive bursts. Some viewers find this stimulating, exhilarating even. In small doses I find it tolerable, but extended beyond say an hour, I just find it exhausting. I become numb to whatever is unfolding on the screen trying to pass for a story. His characters have no internal complexity. His films often lack internal logic and flout the external variety. Apologists often say he's just making fun movies. But that's just it: His movies are not fun.

Amos and Andy in the 21st Century

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen finds Bay at his absolute most indulgent worst. I went in with the lowest expectations for the movie and somehow it managed to undercut even that. I knew I was in for an interminable experience when the first words I heard Optimus Prime utter were: "Punk @$$ Decepticons." It would only go downhill from there. The film is an endurance test and I almost failed. I could have walked out and felt no shame (the only other movie I ever almost walked out on was Rush Hour 2; Brett Ratner is bar none America’s worst working director).

The film is super-saturated with action sequences, which is to be expected, but the bulk of them are completely unintelligible from a visual or logistic point of view. Imagine watching action scenes from The Bourne Identity, but replace Matt Damon with ILM’s hyper-articulated (and downright ugly) CGI robots. I defy anyone to make sense of 90% of the fight-scenes in this movie. At some point it’s just random bits of ornate metal smashing into each other and splintering into more pieces. No attempt is made to imbue any of these creations with character or soul. That goes for both organic and inorganic creatures in this film. The result is action that fails to resonate at all; it's a paradoxically inert spectacle.

I was disappointed to find the screenwriting team responsible for the new Star Trek also penned this dreck. I found that film immensely enjoyable and smartly designed. There is no point rehashing the plot of TF2, because it’s utterly meaningless to the proceedings. The dialogue as noted above is at turns offensive, vapid and cliché (in many some cases a combination of all three). And the less said about the two Sambo-bots: Mudflap and Skids, the better. I will just note how disappointed I am that Steven Spielberg’s name is on this flick. It would seem he had no issue with a film that prominently features two Gremlin-faced, simian-looking, jive-talking, foul-mouthed robots (one sporting a gold tooth, no less) both of whom are apparently illiterate. I hold this against Spielberg even more so than the surprisingly flaccid and disappointing Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

So all this terrible dialogue, frivolous plotting, and incoherent action rumbles along for over two-and-a-half hours, daring the audience to revolt against it. Yet, at the end of the screening I attended on opening day, people actually applauded. I was dumbfounded. I understand art is subjective, but some things are just inarguable. How anyone in the audience felt a connection to anything that transpired on that screen is beyond me.

The only way I can explain it is that the film is pornography for the action-junkie set. It arrives at its goal in the most artless and brutal way possible. I wonder if people who enjoyed this movie felt shame afterwards? God, I hope so.

Of course Bay is not the sole villain here. He is merely the most successful. The past decade has been commercially ruled by Jerry Bruckheimer, producer of the bloated and boring Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, the derivative National Treasure films and his mind-numbingly repetitive television work. Bruckheimer and his ilk, the Stephen Sommers' (who will inflict more pain on our cortices this summer with GI Joe) and McG's of the world, hold the reins. This is the entertainment we flock to and I just don't understand it. We've created a generation that thinks Terminator 2 is a better film than Terminator; that Jaws is boring (yes, somebody actually argued this to me); that Transformers 2 should get a pass because it's got cool effects. Aesthetics in a bare-fisted, knockdown brawl against good story-telling--and it's been no contest. Films like Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen are sins against Creation. And the sooner the movie-going public at large recognizes this, the sooner our redemption can begin. Please, WTFU.

And this sums up everything I've been trying to say:

What's Wrong With This Picture?

When I first heard that “Watchmen” was finally getting the greenlight and that Zack Snyder fresh off the commercial success of “300” would helm the project, ambivalence was the only feeling I could muster. “300” wasn’t a completely unpleasant way to spend a couple of hours. I respected it more for its technical accomplishments than anything else (visually, Snyder produced champagne with beer money). “Dawn of the Dead” I loathed on general principle. You don’t need to remake the best zombie movie ever IMNSHO. And the "innovative" idea to have agile zombies was just spit in George Romero's eye. It wasn’t especially original either, since Danny Boyle did it (better) in the uneven but solid “28 Days Later”. So suffice to say, I didn’t have much confidence that Snyder could transition the source material into a self-contained fully-realized piece of cinema that could stand on its own two legs. The first crop of trailers further deepened my skepticism. Would we get three hours of brutal slo-mo action sequences, perhaps another goofy slo-mo sex scene? Um, yes and yes.

I don’t think there is anything inherently “unfilmable” about "Watchmen". I read Alan Moore’s deconstructionist take on the superhero perhaps a decade ago. There is no doubt that it is a canonical text in the comic book world; it has a place reserved in the pantheon next to Frank Miller’s "The Dark Knight Returns", Gaiman’s "The Sandman" and Garth Ennis’s "Preacher". These works were the foundation of the contemporary comic book. The source material deserves every bit of respect that it's received. "Watchmen" sprawls over twelve issues and spins a wide narrative web; the book's tangents go on tangents. This might seem daunting, but the story has a very clear through-line. It is essentially a detective story told by the paranoid borderline psychotic Rorschach. It has a clearly delineated three-act structure. The book takes the scenic route to get where it's going and I wouldn't want it any other way, but the film doesn't have that luxury nor should it.


The biggest issue Snyder has is that he’s far too reverential towards the source text. Hell, Cecil DeMille took more artistic license with the Ten Commandments than Snyder does with Moore’s "Watchmen." The most glaring issue is that transferring entire swaths of dialogue from the graphic novel does not a good screenplay make. As Anthony Lane points out in his New Yorker review (his review sucks, btw; I don’t know why he or Denby for that matter even review films; they both seem like they hate movies for the most part)--you can’t have characters (even right-wing nutjobs like Rorschach) spouting lines like: “The city screams like an abattoir full of retarded children.” Yes that’s from the original text, but that doesn’t make it, you know, good.

The second major issue is that Snyder fails to capture the mood almost entirely. I’m more forgiving here, because his task was so awesome. How to capture the existential dread of the mid-eighties at the zenith of the cold war and nuclear posturing on both sides of the Iron Curtain? I remember being subjected to fear-mongering propaganda like “The Day After” which is to this day one of the scariest films I’ve ever seen. There are still images seared into my brain decades later like the poor dog digging up the kitchen floor in a vain search for food after the family had abandoned it for the basement shelter post nuclear holocaust. Damn you, Reagan!


Watchmen is set during this period and we see these scenes where tactical decisions are made and the Doomsday Clock moves closer to midnight, but we don’t feel it. We’re as detached from the ordinary citizens as Dr. Manhattan. We don’t spend enough time with the alternate world to really grasp what’s going on. One minute Dan and Laurie are having a nice dinner in a restaurant, the next people are rioting in the streets. Why? If people are rioting, why is Nixon serving a third term? Is America supposed to be a fascist nation? It’s not really clear. It's also not clear what this Watchmen group represents. We're given a couple of flashbacks to photo shoots of team pictures and a couple of Watchmen dispersing a riot, but that's all. There's no sense as to what the Watchmen meant to the world or even to each other. For the unconverted the proceedings on the screen must be terribly bewildering and/or numbingly boring. Why should anyone care about these characters? Not just the superheroes, but anyone? The film doesn't even try to answer that.

To make matters worse, the acting save for a few characters is uniformly atrocious. It’s as if they got Hollywood money to make the flick and populated it with actors that would be mediocre in a Sci-Fi Channel original movie. Malin Akerman who plays the Silk Spectre II seems lost from the very first scene and never recovers; unfortunately she gets probably the second most screen time after the superb Jackie Earle Haley (more on him later). Matthew Goode as Ozymandias comes across as the world’s most obnoxious prick as opposed to the smartest man (which might be fine in another film, but it's a complete mischaracterization of the graphic novel version). I found the Comedian’s performance to be uneven, but again the bad dialogue kneecaps him (see: Vietnam bar scene). Physically (with the exception of Goode's Ozymandias--too scrawny) the characters are three-dimensional doppelgangers of their print counerparts. Sure Patrick Wilson's Dan/Nite Owl could have been a bit paunchier, but he pulls off "middle-aged schlub" quite well. He and Jackie Earle Haley give the movie some desperately needed heart and humanity.

Some positives on the acting: Billy Crudup does about as much as one can do with Dr. Manhattan considering his performance is comprised mainly of voice over (still his few "in the flesh" bits manage to sell the tragedy of Dr. Manhattan with just a handful of scenes). Matt Frewer pops up in a minor but important role; made me smile to see good ol' Max Headroom on the big screen. Carla Cuggino as Sally Jupiter enlivens things in her few scenes, but I kept thinking why not let her play Silk Specter and just get an actual old lady to play Sally? On a related note, all the aging makeup is terrible. And the prosthetics for the actor playing Nixon are distractingly bad. No one got an inkling how bad this stuff looked from the dailies? Jeez. Anyway, Patrick Wilson as the somewhat pathetic Dan manages to create a character the audience can really invest in. Dan/Nite Owl actually comes across as a complex fully-fleshed out character as opposed to the other characters who are given a great deal of expositional baggage, but still feel rather one-dimensional.


Jackie Earl Haley as Rorschach manages to avoid that fate seemingly through force of will. As I mentioned before, he's saddled with some of the most ham-fisted dialogue in the movie, but for the most part he makes it work. He easily monopolizes the movies best scenes including the prison sequence (I still don't understand why there was a riot) and his confrontation with Dr. Manhattan at the film's end. His performance equals Ledger's turn as Joker in terms of truly capturing the essence of a well- established literary character on the screen. I'd honestly sit through the film again (on DVD) just to watch his portrayal of the schizophrenic love child of Philip Marlowe and William F. Buckley.

The word is that Zack Snyder has an extended cut that adds on at least an additional half-hour to the movie. I suspect that cut will be even worse. If I could tell the "visionary director of 300" (as the trailers dramatically intone) one thing, it'd be that what's missing from the film is not more elaborate subplots; what's missing is a vision.

A few notes: unless you’re filming an episode of The Red Shoe Diaries, a slow-motion love scene is completely risible; Tears for Fears "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" should never be used without irony in a film; gratuitous explicit violence is not inherently more real or potent than tastefully cutting away and leaving something to the imagination.

Final note: The one place Snyder does show some inventiveness is the new ending. It works. In fact it works better than Moore's original ending. If it were a better film, I'd be writing about the film's subversive commentary on religion. If it were a better film. Too bad.