Where The Wild Things Are

This movie was very good. The cinematography was gorgeous, the acting was excellent. The voice talents? That list was epic. I cannot believe the cast Spike Jonze pulled together. Mark Ruffalo has two lines, tops. TWO. That’s absurd. I love it. And the effects might have been some of the best I have ever seen. Seriously, I could not have imagined they’d look that good.

That being said, I understand all the negative reviews, and I will tell you why. This movie, and this story, touch on a very large number of extremely dark themes concerning family, imagination, etc. But by touch on, I mean it’s obvious that they could explore it and don’t. But what should be equally obvious is that they can’t. It’s a children’s story. No child is ever going to follow a story with the exploration of any of those themes. The best you can hope for is the following moral: No matter how at home a place may seem, no matter how good things can be, every family has their troubles, and so you are best off making your way back home. That’s the point of the entire story. It can’t afford to delve into the myriad other lessons it admits. Yikes, I’ll stick with pretentious sentences for 400.

As an adult, as a moviegoer, I can say that this movie left me wanting a little more. But, I am smart enough to know that I can’t have it. The story is perfectly executed. In the words of a friend, “I’m really happy this movie didn’t kill a part of my childhood”. Spike Jonze and Dave Eggers turned a 10-sentence story into a wonderfully rich full-length. Karen O’s voice, while extremely annoying, was surprisingly fitting to the score (she co-wrote the score while her band, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, was busy destroying the notion of decent music). And I have to mention Spike Jonze’s filming style. Very well-constructed while being refreshingly haphazard. It looked like a kid would have shot it, but a kid who knows an absurd amount about composition and fluency.

A word to the wise: don’t take your children. This movie, though it is based on a children’s story, is not a children’s movie. I never thought I’d use the phrase “hard PG”, but that’s what this is. I honestly would not have been opposed to a PG-13 rating. The target audience is really college-age and above, people who’ve not only read the story, but are also old enough to understand a fantasy when they see one.

One-line review: A kid’s movie for adults, not kids. Dark and endearing.

Consensus: 78/100

 

New Moon and the rise of Consumer Stupidity

I had the privilege of seeing an advance screening of The Invention of Lying last night, which was excellent. before it showed, there was one, and only one, preview: Richrd Kelly’s The Box. Now, I get pretty excited about movies, not necessarily the ones you’d expect, but when I say that I cannot wait for The Box, I mean that Richard Kelly is a genius and I would sit enthralled to watch someone read the back of a cereal box for two hours if he wrote the script. This movie looks so cool, I almost don’t even care if it’s good. It’s going to be awesome. Southland Tales was not what I would call great (maybe because, several viewings in, I still don’t get it), but it is cool as all hell to watch. Donnie Darko initially gave me the same reaction, except I knew it probably was great, I just didn’t get it (until I saw the Director’s Cut, whence it made perfect sense and is one of the most influential movies in my morbidly obese collection).

So, this preview comes on, I’m bouncing in my seat like a 4-year old on the way to the toy store, and after it, in the row behind me, I hear the following two-line conversation:

Idiot Girl #1: That looks terrible. I hope I never see that, like, ever.

Idiot Girl #2: Ooh, I know. OOH! I wonder if they’ll show the New Moon trailer!

I almost had an aneurysm. No word can describe my mood, my level of angered disappointment. Maybe “Lewis Black-ish” suffices. Nobody can ever remove that conversation from my mind. It will haunt me forever. I’m not really a violent man, but if I were… oh, if I were.

These two lines represent everything that is wrong with consumer culture. New Moon is not good. It’s not even out, and it’s already not good. Twilight was not good. Whatever-the-hell the third one is called will not be good. Hopefully there won’t be any more. If there are, they won’t be good. Bad writing, worse directing, worse acting, no cinematography. Those movies are the death of art in cinema. They aren’t alone, but they are in a unique position.

Their popularity is causing them to influence the entire next generation of indie filmmakers, currently disguised as socially awkward teenagers who now think this is what a good movie is. If any of you are reading this, IT ISN’T. Stop buying in to shitty cinema and go see a real movie. Go watch something by Danny Boyle (other than Slumdog Millionaire). Go watch some Darren Aronofsky. Some John August, some Rian Johnson. How about some foreign film? Some Michael Haneke? Some Takashi Miike? Or more importantly, how about some Richard Kelly. Go see The Box.

Throw your Twilight crap in with the rest of the trash and watch something that takes your breath away. Something pretty to look at, something you can’t possibly understand the first time, something… human. A good movie is like a person. It should take you years to figure it out, and even longer to appreciate it. Donnie Darko is Gandhi. Twilight is Miley Cyrus (that’s a bad thing, which you probably don’t know if you liked Twilight). Richard Kelly is a Picasso of modern film. Stephanie Meyer and the New Moon director are the artistic equivalents of a drunk four-year-old.

Those girls should be ashamed to be so stupid, but they’re too stupid to realize that. Don’t follow in their footsteps. If the world loses even one great filmmaker to consumer stupidity, I may snap.

One final note: I will say the soundtrack for New Moon unfortunately looks quite impressive. Thom Yorke, Death Cab, Muse, Grizzly Bear, they have gotten some goodies. All this tells me is that these musicians want money. A lot of money. They will get it. There is no such thing as artistic integrity in the soundtrack business. Thom Yorke has already established his artistic integrity about 9 times over, he doesn’t care. Money is not a shameful thing to pursue. Sure, they’re making money off of stupid people, but if you ask me, people stupid enough to buy into the Twilight culture of ignorance don’t deserve their money. Give it to a good cause. Like Thom Yorke. Someone with something to say in his life.

 

The Brothers Bloom

Wow. I am writing a review here, so I will say more, but I wish I didn’t have to; that you could see into my head and hear all the wonderful things I have to say about this without me having to put them into words.

Rian Joshnson is the writer-director of my favorite movie: Brick. He introduced me to my favorite actress (Nora Zehtener, if you’re reading this, you are perfect), and breathed new life into the Film Noir genre, especially for me. His second effort, nearly 5 years later, is another written and directed by piece called The Brothers Bloom. Sophomore slump? I think not.

Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weisz, and Rinko Kikuchi. All Oscar winners or nominees, save for Ruffalo, who should be (Reservation Road and Zodiac especially). Even a momentary appearance by Nora Zehetner (I cheered).

The story follows two brothers, who are given humble beginnings as con men at the ages of 8 and 10, through a poetic (literally, rhyming) introduction that felt as though it could be from a Wes Anderson movie (which is funny to say, because Johnson is much better). They discover that the perfect con is one in which everbody involved gets exactly what they want. Jump to 25 years later, the younger (Brody) wants out. He’s not happy. His life is lived playing parts. He wants a real life. Jump to 3 months later. The older (Ruffalo) has a con for him. I can’t escape the feeling that the older is conning the younger to get him what he wants. The mark is a rich young invalid of sorts. She crashes several Lamborghinis, has a new one delivered each day, and I die a little inside. Weisz plays it perfectly. Whenever she sees something fascinating, she learns how to do it (hilarious montage!); apparently she never saw someone drive a Lamborghini not into a wall. Brody reels her in, she wants an adventure. They’re off!

I don’t like synopses, so I’ll stop here. It’s a good stopping point because from here on out, you constantly wonder: What’s the real con? Who’s conning who? Who’s in on it? Will they all get what they want?

This movie is nearly perfect. It’s touching, gripping, impossible not to watch, and very funny. My parents were skeptical. I made them see it. They walked out in awe. I will be seeing it again this week.

Consensus: 98/100

 

Slumdog Millionaire

Yeah. I’d have to go with this one. Finally, Danny Boyle is getting the recognition he has deserved for so long, bursting out of cult standing and into the limelight. I think one of my favorite things about this movie is that there’s pretty much nobody in it. You don’t have to cast Brad Pitt to sell tickets, you just have to tell a good story. That’s exactly what this is.

The ending, while a bit hokey, did something for me that not a lot of happy movie endings do: it made me happy. I tend to get annoyed at happy endings, because real life isn’t like that, but I was okay with this one. It doesn’t help that I knew what the answer to the last question was, made it a bit anti-climactic. Or maybe that’s what did help.

Danny Boyle has a rare talent for pairing up with writers that are painfully well suited to his style. I could talk about this one, but I’d like to draw some attention to his long-term partner-in-text, Alex Garland. His first novel was The Beach, which Danny Boyle knocked out of the park (except for that one video-game scene, but even then best albums have one bad song), and his second novel was 28 Days Later. Bet you didn’t know it was a book first. It was. Then, Danny called Alex up and said “hey, how about you just write me a screenplay so that you don’t have to adapt your own books”, and Alex Garland wrote Sunshine. I rest my case. Danny Boyle has the eye to pick a beautiful piece of work.

A final note: I thought it was really, REALLY interesting how much this movie reminded me of 28 Days Later. Watching the funny angles as kids ran through the slums, or as they were being chased, even when Latika is running at the very end, I felt like they were all being chased by zombies.

Consensus: 88/100

 

Harsh Times

For some reason, when I heard the now-famous Christian Bale rant on YouTube (see below for a link), I felt I had heard it before. Didn’t know why, couldn’t place that eerie feeling of similarity. And then I remembered: Harsh Times. This extremely underrated movie by David Ayer (his second film after the wildly successful Training Day, featuring one of the better good bad guys in recent memory) reminds me why he’s a younger and less respected West-Coast Scorsese. Yikes, that was a mouthful. But this movie is essentially a 100-minute version of the YouTube recording. So much so that after I re-watched it I had to listen to that recording to make sure someone hadn’t strung together bits of this movie as a hoax.

Christian Bale plays his wheelhouse role (that has served him so well in American Psycho, The Machinist, and others) of that douchebag who you really want to believe might be a nice guy even though he keeps proving you wrong. And boy, did he hit his stride with this one. Christian Bale has three kinds of movies:

• The pop-culture: Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, 3:10 To Yuma, Equilibrium.
• The Angry Prick: American Psycho, The Machinist, Harsh Times, Rescue Dawn, REAL LIFE (apparently)
• The SERIOUSLY CHRISTIAN BALE WAS IN THAT?!?: Newsies, Swing Kids, Little Women, Pocahontas, Shaft.

Wow. What a career.

I misspoke, David Ayer didn’t direct Training Day (Antoine Fuqua did). But he wrote it. He has written other stuff too, most of it you have heard of but isn’t worth mentioning in the same breath as Training Day and Harsh Times (Seriously, he wrote S.W.A.T. and the original The Fast and The Furious). But really. He may as well have directed it.

Consensus: 60/100

 

Yikes

I just read that Gus Van Sant directed the remake of Psycho. What? On a side note, check out Paranoid Park. That’s his most recent (before Milk), and it’s interesting.

And, while I’m at it, I had kind of wanted to see Taken, just to see Liam Neeson be a bad-ass. But I randomly saw that it was written by Luc Besson (The Professional, one of my favorite movies), and now I am going to see it. Definitely.