Evening the Score

I am overjoyed to report that in a 24 hour-period I was fortunate enough to make three visits to the movie theater, matching the amount of visits in the past 6 weeks. The action started out at 9:20 on Monday night with a trip to the local New Jersey multiplex with for March of the Penguins, picked back up the next morning at 10:40 with an Angelika excursion for Broken Flowers and concluded the event with the good fortune of seeing a 6:00 advanced screening of The 40 Year-Old Virgin. Days like this don’t grow on trees.

March of the Penguins had a few nice qualities: it moves at an extremely brisk pace, is commendable for not shying away from the grimmer aspects of the journey, and most importantly, it is unquestionably a great thrill to watch penguins slowly waddle around. However, this cute and cuddly documentary ultimately didn’t feel like anything that can’t be saved for PBS, I can think of more impressive bird-related documentaries I’ve seen in theaters. It’s about on par with the uninformative but majestic Winged Migration but doesn’t compete with the accessibility and warm-heartedness of The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill.

Broken Flowers on the other hand is a very nicely presented little story that has one or two things in common with About Schmidt, most favorably, its episodic narrative that so easily emulates the feeling of reading an engrossing novel. The story is that of an aged Don Juan-type character played by Bill Murray and his cathartic odyssey of traveling to ex-girlfriends after receiving an anonymous letter saying he is the uninformed father of a 20-year-old child. The film is careful to make the distinction between casting the character as a Don Juan and not as a womanizer. He rarely says anything more than he has to and uses this to make any slight compliment or pleasantry seem all the more important. Unlike his overdone ironic detachment in the obnoxious The Life Aquatic, Murray’s performance here conveys an underlying sense of feeling obstructed by an emotionally impotent exterior. The film also benefits from some marvelous albeit brief supporting performances, particularly an unrecognizable Tilda Swinton and a positively radiant Sharon Stone. I was reminded of a play I saw at the beginning of my London stay on the West End called Some Girl(s) starring sitcom favorite David Schwimmer and written by hard-working and hard-biting playwright/filmmaker Neil Labute. Schwimmer played an indecisive man about to get married who decides to fly across America and visit four girls that he wronged in the past in hope of making amends. His oblivious insensitivity makes the spree painful for all involved and the play articulates a type of male character that can be incredibly damaging. Casting someone like David Schwimmer in this role makes the message all the more effective in that someone of his nature comes off as so completely non-threatening to men yet has the ability to be so irreparably damaging to numerous women. Broken Flowers does not cast its lead character negatively but rather observes the sustained results of years of romantic entanglements.

Continuing on the topic of the power of sexual relations but switching gears thematically, we have The 40 Year-Old Virgin, a peculiar studio film that manages to be conventional yet unconventional at the same time. The film doesn’t entirely work but there are a lot of very funny and unexpected scenes that make it worth a casual viewing. As far as gross-out comedies go, The 40 Year-Old Virgin is more interested in being There’s Something About Mary than Anchorman but it doesn’t quite succeed at reaching that level of widely accessible sex and fart jokes. Unlike Mary which had the ability to connect with audiences of different ages pretty unanimously, this is very much targeted toward the late teens-early 20’s demographic. Co-written and directed by Judd Apatow, the brains behind the brilliant television shows Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, the film similarly walks the tightrope between mean-spiritedness and genuine heart but doesn’t obtain the precise balance that he mastered in the television world. The first half gets bogged down with extremely vulgar material featuring throwaway ethnic and homosexual jabs and unnecessarily excessive cursing. There is one incredibly long sequence of gay jokes that never pays off thematically. While the scene is undeniably funny, the fact that it serves no purpose plot-wise initially confounded me. I later found myself appreciating the film being scattered with completely superfluous scenes as it is one of its most charming traits. While the camaraderie between the four males isn’t as effective as it was on Undeclared, we do get a sense of real-life conversations and natural dialogue that is surely an effect of a very loose and improvisation-heavy set. Another clear by-product of the ad-libbing is the plethora of obscure and pointed pop-culture references (Beautician and the Beast?) that alternate between misfires and uproariously funny because of their completely out-of-left-field nature. Then the second half arrives and we get blindsided by some genuinely touching scenes thanks principally to Steve Carrell’s surprisingly deep performance. Shedding his trilogy of newscaster-based roles entirely, he gives a meaningful and empathetic performance that skillfully elevates the character out of what could have so easily been a one-dimensional sketch character. His performance in the Planned Parenthood clinic scene is the stand out comedic set-piece, not the heavily publicized and spectacle heavy chest waxing scene.

The film borrows from There’s Something About Mary in a couple of ways, not least in its out-of-place but ultimately enjoyable conclusion, but also by filling the background with eccentric and imperfect supporting characters. Even the Paul Rudd character that starts out as the requisite amicable, hopeless romantic becomes more and more unbalanced as the film progresses. Paul Rudd is an actor who has always impressed me with his ability to easily alternate between independent and mainstream work in all sorts of various roles ranging from Clueless, The Cider House Rules, The Shape of Things, Anchorman, and even a recurring role on the final two seasons of Friends. I’ve always admired his willingness to make himself look absolutely ridiculous while being able to maintain his meek and mild-mannered characterization. My only complaint here is a bit too much Ron Burgundy seems to have rubbed off on him at times, particularly the porn delivery scene.

The way the film manages to incorporate emotion into its core without becoming too hokey is also worthy of recognition. Although there is one incredibly cheesy line toward the film’s climax that would have benefited most from the film’s established sardonic humor. We keep waiting for something biting to undercut it but instead the filmmakers simply let it hang which is disappointing at such a crucial moment as this. Still the scene is prefaced with a classic 80s rock song so I guess it can be forgiven. Unevenness and excessive politically incorrect jokes aside, Carrell’s performance and some very funny and unexpected situations constitute a viewing.

Next I’ll continue posting some film theory essays, as was prefaced with the brief dissection of a sequence from A Clockwork Orange and in spirit of The 40 Year-Old Virgin, an investigation into gross-out comedy using genre theory should be up shortly.

Clockwork Formalism

During the course of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, the viewer is repeatedly forced to acknowledge the medium. This primary emphasis on presentation rather than content exemplifies the film as Formalist filmmaking. Even the sequences within the film that veer close to Realism are always earmarked with a formalist touch. Two such instances include long takes during the 360° shot in the record store that ends with a cut that crosses the 180° line making the edit apparent, as well as the twanging sound effects in accordance with the baton hits during the drowning.

According to Sergei Eisenstein (one of the founding fathers of Formalism) the most important tool of cinema is montage, “which may be roughly defined as the reinforcing of the meaning of one image by association with another image not necessarily part of the same episode.” (Bazin) In this regard, one of the film’s most formalist sequences occurs around the twenty-minute mark. Upon returning home from his boundless night of immoral debauchery, Alex plops down on his bed in a childlike manner and through voice-over narration, declares all he needed to give the night the perfect ending was “a bit of the old Ludwig Van.” Here the viewer enters into a sequence that employs Eisenstein’s primary requirement for montage to create meaning: collision. (Eisenstein) In fact, Kubrick achieves a type of montage prior to splicing shots together. In a single shot, the camera starts on the naked woman in the painting hanging in Alex’s room and slowly tilts down, revealing Alex’s pet snake slithering on a tree branch directly in front of the woman’s genitals and concludes on a display of four porcelain Jesus statues. The iconography appears biblical as the snake’s relation to the naked woman harkens to the Adam and Eve mythology. Furthermore, the multiple Jesus figures are depicted without cross and raising a clenched fist heavenward in a “celebration of pleasure” to the fall of Eve. (Nelson)

Following this shot is a rapid succession of extreme close-ups of different body parts of the Christ interrupted by an approximately 20 second close-up of Alex, whose arm movement and facial expression imply he is gratifying himself. This long shot (in relation to the preceding and following edits) segues into the classical Eisenstein montage sequence. Alex prefaces “As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures.” The viewer receives a quick shot of Beethoven’s eyes followed by a series of non-diegetic inserts juxtaposed with a recurring shot of Alex dressed like a vampire. First a shot of a woman being hanged; followed by Vampire Alex with fangs and blood on his mouth; an explosion with dirt and rocks flying toward the camera; return to Vampire Alex; train car exploding; Vampire Alex; clip from One Million Years B.C. of an avalanche of boulders; Vampire Alex; and finally a volcano erupting and spewing out lava. This final shot clearly symbolizes ejaculation and henceforth concludes the sequence. The constant repetition of the Vampire Alex shot suggests that like a vampire, Alex’s sustenance and vitality depend on feeding off violence and savagery.

The physical construction of the film is impossible to ignore. Kubrick achieves this formalist state by employing a medley of visual and aural techniques that consistently reveal the filmmaker’s orchestration. In effect, Kubrick embraces the conventions of Formalism while grounding the film in Realism by way of long takes and elaborate sets that create an alternate world; a world able to be manipulated as the director deems worthy.

Works Cited
Andre Bazin, “The Evolution of the Language of Cinema,” in Film Theory and Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 42.
Sergei Eisenstein, “Beyond the Shot,” in Film Theory and Criticism, ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 19.
Thomas Allen Nelson, Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist’s Maze (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 152.

Romanticizing and Americanizing: The Dueling Richard Curtis Romantic Comedy Trilogies

In recent years, the most popular British exports to America have largely been romantic comedies, many of which are written by Richard Curtis. Curtis first got a name for himself working in television on BBC programs like Black Adder with frequent collaborator Rowan Atkinson. Since Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell, 1994) connected so strongly with American audiences (bringing in over $50 Million dollars at the US box office, as well as being nominated for 2 Academy Awards, screenplay and Best Picture) Curtis has become a symbol for consistently successful romantic comedies causing Nick James to go as far as dub him “Britain’s most successful screenwriter.”

However, there seems to be a departure developing from his work in the late ‘90s and his most recent 2000 entries. His three early romantic comedies [Four Weddings, Notting Hill (Roger Michell, 1999), and Bridget Jones’ Diary (Sharon Maguire, 2001)] deal with very similar central depictions of love: initially unattainable, fraught with back-and-forth crises culminating in profession and union of “true love” at the film’s conclusion. Whereas his three later romantic comedies [Love Actually (Richard Curtis, 2003), Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (Beeban Kidron, 2004) and The Girl in the Café (David Yates, 2005)] take a slightly more skewed portrayal of love as well as incorporate a burgeoning interest in politics on a scale unseen in his earlier films. These later films mark a deviation from his earlier work in thematic view points, quality, and reception.

Curtis’ three early romantic comedies can be collectively classified as “Urban Fairy-tales,” a term Robert Murphy institutes to investigate the spate of British romantic comedies being produced since the late ‘90s. Frustratingly, Murphy excludes Bridget Jones from the list insisting that it should not qualify because the protagonists “hardly suffer at all and blunder undeservedly into happiness.” Immediately one has to approach this article with hesitation because the supposed distinction between the suffering of Bridget Jones (Renée Zellwegger) and the suffering of Charles (Hugh Grant) in Four Weddings and a Funeral does not seem readily apparent. While it is true that Charles has to deal with the death of a close friend, his overall distress comes from the inability to obtain his image of true love, a subject Bridget Jones can certainly understand. In fact, the entire comedic impetus of the two Bridget Jones films relies on Bridget being put into humiliating situations as a spring board for eliciting laughter. Aside from the comedic scenes that can perhaps be written off by her ultimate perseverance and charm, Bridget unquestionably suffers at the hands of her boss Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant – once again), who maliciously lies to her about his past and has no qualms about using her for sex despite her obviously stronger desires toward him.

Nonetheless, Murphy instills an interesting lens to view Curtis’ early films, saying, “they show life in Britain as exciting, glamorous and full of romantic possibilities, and are constructed like fairy-tales.” It is not difficult to tell that these films choose to depict a fantasy-world view of London lifestyle that glamorizes and idealizes the location and its inhabitants to a considerably cinematic degree. One can equate Curtis’ style to Woody Allen’s repeated unabashedly beautified depictions of New York City locales. Like Allen, Curtis has been criticized for excluding minorities from his stories. Interestingly, both filmmakers attempt to rectify this by casting the actor Chiwetel Ejiofor as an affluent and refined ethnic character in their respective recent comedies, Love Actually and Melinda and Melinda (2005).

This heavily romanticized depiction of the world, despite occasionally being derided for its selective realism, is one of the integral appealing factors of the Curtis comedies: “The re-creation of London as an enchanted village where lovers are able to find each other among the city’s teeming millions and chance encounters and coincidental meetings are to be expected.” The vision of Four Weddings and a Funeral appears particularly liberal in depiction of social class. There is a prevalent feeling of affluence floating leisurely throughout the events, yet there is virtually no reference to actual work making the social class standings all the more incredible. Charles in particular has no explanation for his implied wealth; one can perhaps surmise that he is a writer due to his free time, verbose nature, and a facetious remark about him researching pubs with the word boat in the title. Out of his friends, the only one to explicitly mention work is his offbeat roommate Scarlet, who says on a Saturday that she might go look for a job but does not seem too concerned about the situation. While another friend, Tom, is purported to be the 7th richest man in England. This constant air of unwarranted wealth further intensifies the idealized view of Britain.

Notting Hill takes its economic situation a little more seriously. William (Grant), runs a humble, not entirely successful book shop and his relationship with movie star, Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) repeatedly makes note of him feeling inferior and out of his social class. Robert Murphy also touches upon a sort of Thatcher reactionary element in that “Bernie the stockbroker and Tony the restaurateur are both redeemed by their failure to succeed in the material world (Bernie loses his job and Tony’s restaurant goes bankrupt).” It is still important to note that these actions are not portrayed with dire consequences. Like Notting Hill, Bridget Jones’ Diary begins to acknowledge class structure more realistically with Bridget’s desire to elevate her social status by advancing her career in addition to her romance with high-profile lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth), a subject further explored in the sequel.

All three of these early romantic comedies deal with the chance relationship between the protagonist and an object of desire that remains out of reach through various complications until the climax. In Four Weddings and Notting Hill, the love interest is an American woman whose exoticism and unobtainable nature prove to be irresistible for the meek and inexperienced Hugh Grant character. In Bridget Jones, the American woman is still physically present in the form of Renée Zellwegger but her nationality has been masked by a flawless British accent. All three love interests rely on a series of coincidental, chance encounters. Bridget’s relationship with Mark is at first played for ridicule at the characters’ disdain for repeatedly running into each other. The other two relationships are depicted in a more contrived manner, with Notting Hill making more effort to create believable encounters than Four Weddings which takes a very haphazard approach to the recurring bump-ins managing to make Charles’ relationship with Carrie (Andie MacDowell) even less believable than William’s brush with celebrity.

All of Curtis’ romantic comedies have been joint ventures with US production companies and the need for the films to succeed in America is more important than in its native England. Nick James points out that “the problem of wanting ‘a sustainable British film industry’ is that the domestic market alone may never be hungry enough to support it.” In this respect, Curtis can clearly and reasonably be accused of watering-down his image of London in order to pander to American Hollywood audiences. James suggests Curtis is fully aware of this fact and commends him for making the most of it: “Curtis is brilliant enough to have built British film industry defeatism into the plot of Notting Hill, his romance between an insignificant British bookseller and a world-famous Hollywood movie star.” If Notting Hill can be conceived as a concession to the overarching American influence, then Love Actually appears to be a subversive and cheeky form of retaliation.

Billed on its tagline as “The Ultimate Romantic Comedy,” Richard Curtis’ directorial debut focuses on an ensemble of love stories and running at 135 minutes, it is certainly ultimate in the sense that it is one of the longest romantic comedies in film history. More importantly, Love Actually is a deviation from past work in both its depiction of Americans and of love itself. There are three particularly provocative images of Americans in the film: a group of 5 beautiful girls from Wisconsin, the President of The United States (Billy Bob Thornton), and Sarah (Laura Linney), a pleasant office worker whose mentally challenged brother takes a toll on her social life. The first case featuring the beautiful Americans revolves around a brash young man named Colin (Kris Marshall) whose character balances carefully between unappealing and charismatic. After getting fed up with the uptight British women, he journeys to America in search of beautiful women with loose morals. Colin hastily departs for Wisconsin, a Mid-Western state whose connotation does not readily evoke images of beautiful women in the minds of American audience members. No sooner does Colin walk into an American bar that he immediately meets three beautiful American women, all played by up-and-coming American actresses in a series of cameos that escalate in star grandeur. The women do not seem swayed by Colin’s goofy physical attributes and instantly fall for his British accent before inviting him back to their apartment for an orgy, furthering the image of overly amorous American women first depicted by Carrie in Four Weddings.

The second American enters the film through the plot strand focusing on the newly elected, bachelor Prime Minister, David (naturally played by Curtis’ stalwart, Hugh Grant). From the instant the President of the United States appears on screen, it is immediately evident that this is a thinly veiled caricature of Bill Clinton. Any thought of the similarities ending with physical attribute is completely wiped away when David walks in on the President mildly fondling his secretary. The scene sets the stage for David’s defiant press meeting where he boldly and unexpectedly declares that England is not going to be bullied by the United States any more. In this sequence, the music swells, the crowd cheers and the image of England flexing its backbone is Curtis’ first moment of politically charged cinema. However, reflection on the expository scene reveals that in true Richard Curtis manner, David’s act of rebellion is based just as largely on the personal transgression of the President inappropriately encroaching on David’s love interest as it is politically motivated.

The third American image is more problematic. Contrasted to the previous examples of amicability and pointed ridicule, Sarah is not played for laughs and appears as one of the film’s most tragic characters. She is depicted as caring, friendly and attractive yet she is one of the few characters to be denied romantic love by the film’s end. Unless Sarah can alleviate her love of her mentally handicapped brother enough to ignore his incessant phone calls, she can never achieve romantic love within the film’s diegesis.

This returns to Curtis’ depiction of love and how it has changed from his early romantic comedies. Four Weddings, Notting Hill and Bridget Jones all conclude with the idea of the couple embracing in an everlasting love. Love Actually takes a slightly different approach with the focus on new relationships blossoming in every story; this is very much a film about new love and impermanence. In the film’s opening, love literally dies in the form of recent widower Daniel (Liam Neeson) performing the eulogy at his wife’s funeral. At the film’s end, Daniel finds hope of a new love in the form of a beautiful woman played by Claudia Schiffer who happens to be a single mother at his stepson’s school. Even more improbably, the stepson embraces and promotes this relationship for his step-dad.

Two of the central stories focus on married couples, neither of which symbolizes the idyllic image of marital bliss. The film begins with the marriage of two young people, the smug Peter (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and the angelic Juliet (Keira Knightly). As the narrative progresses, it is revealed that Peter’s best friend Mark (Andrew Lincoln) is secretly harboring a considerable crush on Juliet. When Mark finally professes his love, Juliet rushes into the street and gives him a small but passionate kiss before returning to her husband causing Mark to respond in an aside, “Enough for now.” While this particular relationship concludes ambiguously at the film’s end, if anything it is suggested Mark has gotten over his crush, a marriage that begins with the bride kissing her husband’s best friend is surely not symbolic of a sturdy foundation.

The second married couple subplot is even more distressing. Harry (Alan Rickman) and Karen (Emma Thompson) have been married for a number of years and have two young children together. However, Harry develops an office romance with his secretary. When Karen discovers her husband’s transgressions, she stoically stays with Harry in order to keep up the appearance of loving mother and wife for her children’s sake. In this instance, familial love is represented as stronger and more important than romantic love between husband and wife.

While it is true that Four Weddings and a Funeral did not represent the institution of marriage with the utmost reverence, it concludes with the end credits epilogue of all the main characters’ wedding photos suggesting a final harmony to the subject. Conversely, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason explores what happens after Bridget and Mark’s climactic kissing in the snow, suggesting that things are not tied up as neatly as they appear in the end of the first film. Sadly, the feckless sequel denotes a low-point in Curtis’ career as it is merely a retread of the original’s plot without the charm and heart of the former. Of course, the two Bridget Jones films must be studied under a weary eye as they are ultimately accredited as predominately products of the literary author, Helen Fielding.

Carrying over from the political undertones of Love Actually, Girl in the Café tells the story of a civil servant (Bill Nighy), his attraction to a young woman (Kelly Macdonald) and how their relationship stirs political controversy when he brings her to the G8 Summit. The main cast eschews the American celebrity from his past five romantic comedies and not surprisingly, the film did not see an American theatrical release, debuting on HBO instead. It is important to note that the main selling point on the DVD cover is “Written by Richard Curtis”, displayed predominantly above the actors’ and the director’s names.

With the advertising clout of his name and his promotion to director on Love Actually and its international success, Curtis appears to becoming a more and more powerful and influential filmmaking voice as the years have progressed. However, the dull, insincere and money hungry, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason in combination with the limited exposure of Girl in the Café reveals that Curtis has not achieved a flawless romantic comedy track record nor is he immune to the desires of the American market. While he can get away with playfully nibbling at the hand that feeds him in Love Actually, the negative response to Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and the general apathy toward The Girl in the Café prove there are certain levels of quality and Americanization that audiences expect from his films.

References
James, Nick. “They Think It’s All Over: British Cinema’s US Surrender,” in The British Cinema Book [second edition], edited by Robert Murphy. London: British Film Institute, 2001.
Murphy, Robert. “Citylife: Urban Fairy-tales in Late 90s British Cinema,” in The British Cinema Book [second edition], edited by Robert Murphy. London: British Film Institute, 2001.

London Called

Despite a rather late entry into the game, I have finally got around to jumping on the cinema studies blogspot bandwagon, a prospering field thanks to the impressively furtive work by Jeff and Cullen this summer. My belated initiation is based on three extenuating factors: initial skepticism against the blog community, the past 6 weeks of the summer being spent out of the country and general laziness. Of course the latter being the main stumbling block but now that the first two excuses no longer hold water, I’ll be doing my best to overcome the always problematic tendency toward inactivity.

Today marks my first day back in America after 6 weeks spent in London studying British Cinema and Shakespeare, two fields I have come to revere greatly. At the program’s start it would have been a generous overstatement to say that I had a very limited background in Shakespeare, Macbeth being the only play I truly paid attention to during my regrettably apathetic high school years; although in my defense the curriculum was not overly supportive of the Bard. Fortunately I had a few filmic interpretations floating around the back of the memory bank to help access the plays, in addition to the ever trusty Sparknotes of course. It must be said that after doing the required extracurricular research to acquaint myself with the initially seeming impenetrable text, I found the material to be quite rewarding and important. If nothing else it has opened up so many more pop culture references. Take for example the scene in Reality Bites when Ethan Hawke answers the phone with “Hello, you’ve reached the winter of our discontent,” which I now know to originate from the opening line of Richard III (although I probably should have known that beforehand). Or the immortal lines from Rush’s 1981 rockin’ ode to celebrity, Limelight, where lead singer Geddy Lee liberally quotes As You Like It’s “All the world’s a stage/ and we are merely players.” Or better yet, all the interesting pieces of verse not instantly familiar to contemporary audiences.
“I am sure my love’s more ponderous than my tongue.” (King Lear)
“The shadow of your sorrow hath destroyed the shadow of your face.” (Richard II)
“Friendship is constant in all other things save the office and affairs of love.” (Much Ado About Nothing)
“I am a great eater of beef and I believe that does harm to my wit.” (Twelfth Night) or my personal favorite,
-“But what’s his offense?”
-“Groping for trouts in a peculiar river.” (Measure for Measure) – gropingtrout.blogspot.com being a close second for my blog title.

Switching over to the British Cinema class, a welcome return to film, as that is the ostensible aim of this blog. The screening list consisted of The 39 Steps (Hitchcock), A Canterbury Tale (Powell and Pressburger), Brief Encounter (David Lean), The Ladykillers (Alex Mackendrick), Billy Liar (John Schlesinger), Kes (Ken Loach), Life is Sweet (Mike Leigh), Four Weddings and a Funeral (Mike Newell), Trainspotting (Danny Boyle) and In This World (Michael Winterbottom). As you see, the list covers a wide gamut of the top British directors and I found all these films to be especially interesting, save Ladykillers which ran a little dark for my taste. Four Weddings and a Funeral being a perennial favorite of mine, I chose to write my paper on the fluffy subject of Richard Curtis penned romantic comedies, e.g. Bridget Jones’ Diary, Notting Hill and Love Actually. While this does not necessarily make for cutting edge, high art, cinematic study it was a subject close to my heart with plenty of previous research. A key factor as my access to film was rather restricted while being in London due to the different region encodings. With the overall film inaccessibility, the Shakespeare immersion and overall time required for soaking up London atmosphere, my movie watching took a great toll throughout the month of July. Although after the mad frenzy of film watching in May and June, this was a welcome reprieve. So while I slowly begin to catch up on outside movie watching and report on my findings, I’ll coast by for a few days posting archival material of papers written over the past two years of collegiate study, starting with the recent Richard Curtis dossier.

In the meantime I’ll begin with a brief summation of my London based cinema excursions. If you think going to the movies in New York is expensive, try London. Most tickets run somewhere between 6 pounds and 12 pounds, an exorbitant amount in itself but an absolutely ludicrous amount when converted to dollars. I knew I would have to choose wisely on my scarce theater trips. The lucky three films that I deemed worthy of my precious pounds were Wedding Crashers, The Skeleton Key and Mr. and Mrs. Smith. As you can see, I ignored my choosing wisely strategy. The one choice I make no concession about is Wedding Crashers. An enormous hit back in the states, the film cured any unwelcome thoughts of homesickness and gave me immediate conversation set-ups with friends back home. Owen Wilson’s style of humor has been a favorite of mine over the past few years and while I am not always an ardent Vince Vaughn fan (he sleepwalked through Dodgeball) his rapid-fire dialogue spewing can be very funny as long as it’s not overdone, i.e. Made. Thanks in large to its charismatic leads, Wedding Crashers proved to be raunchy summer fun despite the occasional foray into Meet the Parents apeing.

The Skeleton Key was my major misstep. I don’t completely regret the decision since it opened in London two weeks before America and the pre-release knowledge of the final product is always fun to flaunt at every trailer or poster opportunity. I was also tantalized by the credit, “From the writer of The Ring.” While some might scoff, I found The Ring to be one of the scarier and deeper horror films to come out in recent years so I figured Ehren Kruger should be reputable enough to make this worth a decent scare or two. Now I know to transfer all credit for The Ring to Gore Verbinski and any other member of the production crew aside from Kruger. His screenplay for The Skeleton Key is absolutely horrendous and lathers on obvious exposition scenes without mercy. The Kate Hudson character makes an exceptionally poor lead. She’s virtually the same character that Naomi Watts played but Hudson doesn’t have the charm to pull off the “determined to find out the truth” trait in spite of being a completely unlikable, abrasively confrontational jerk. The strong Peter Skarsgaard is also wasted behind a shaky southern drawl and lifeless screen time. The only actor who gets away unscathed is the prestigious John Hurt who wisely plays a stroke victim with no coherent lines of dialogue.

As for Mr. and Mrs. Smith, well what can I say, I couldn’t resist. I didn’t get the chance to see it before leaving America and I knew it wouldn’t be easy to see by the time I got returned so I figured why not. As luck would have it, I found it to be a light summer entertainment foray in the same spirit as Wedding Crashers. While it is noisy and excessively frenetic on the one hand; the off-beat humor, quirky casting decisions and tongue-in-cheek bravado pay off handsomely. While Doug Liman is certainly not portrayed to be the easiest director to work with, he sure seems to know how to sculpt an entertaining studio product that manages to remain safe while not appearing completely mindless. In this instance, he brilliantly turns the film into a romantic dilemma with a professional assassin background rather than vice versa. The relationship between the leads is given genuine weight and the action revolves around their inability to connect emotionally and the being hired to kill each other plot is merely a device to investigate their marital situation, a point brilliantly illustrated by the book-ending group therapy scenes. The frivolity with which the action plot is resolved, and by that I mean there is virtually no resolution, harkens back to Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (thank you British Cinema) where the ludicrous Mr. Memory sub-plot is arguably just a means for the two lead characters to meet and fall in love. Even though there isn’t much connection between Liman’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith and Hitchcock’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I think there is room for an interesting investigation into Hitchcockian tendencies, mainly 39 Steps and North by Northwest, could be carried out quite fruitfully here. Then again this is a flashy summer blockbuster and it’s generally a safe assumption that explorations remain at surface level in these situations. Of course, I am no stranger to frothy examinations as my impending postings on the relevance of late ‘90s Gross-Out Comedies and the political and cultural undertones of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure will make alarmingly clear.