"...despite its generic title and the professions of its central characters, The Hit bears little resemblance to the gangster film in the traditional sense. It’s closer in nature to Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell’s Performance, a film that opens as a full-on gritty gangster film but radically shifts gears to become a psychedelic head trip about questioning self-identity. The Hit is a less complex (and less frustrating) film but it follows a similar trajectory of using gangster film qualities to philosophize about the nature of death."
"Bruce Springsteen On the Road: 40 Years with the Boss is the definition of a mixed bag; and also a misnomer – these two discs neither show tour footage nor cover the promised 40-year span of Bruce’s career. The second disc might be too technical for casual fans of Springsteen and the first disc is so shoddily constructed that it can’t even serve as a primer for new recruits. Nevertheless, strong Bruce supporters will definitely be captivated by the second disc and I’m inclined to say that if you can find the set at a reduced cost it would be worth picking up."
"Kenner appeals to enlightenment rather than condemnation, and the text-based conclusion offers specific practices for viewers to consider. Even if they're only micro compared to the policy reform that the film essentially bids for, it at least offers tangible suggestions (scored to Bruce Springsteen no less). Participant Media also published a paperback companion that further explores issues raised in the film, and shipped it to bookstores in advance of the film’s theatrical release. By suggesting alternatives in a controlled, persuasive manner, Food, Inc. distinguishes itself from social awareness ego-trips like Richard Linklater's pedantic adaptation of Fast Food Nation and from the scores of fear-mongering documentaries that criticize without offering solutions: Michael Moore, Charles Ferguson, etc. take note."
When Quantum of Solace hit theaters this past November, it was met with a fierce critical drubbing for being too frenetic, too downbeat, too un-Bond. All salient points that deserve attention; in many ways it feels like an indie Bond made on the quick to let out some aggression in between grander, more satisfying efforts. And I concede that the first twenty minutes borders on the unwatchable with enough incomprehensible action to suggest that Bond is the progeny rather than the progenitor of Bourne. But I choose to turn a blind eye on its flaws because Quantum of Solace and its superior brethren Casino Royale do something that no other Bond films do: engage me both viscerally and cerebrally.
For me, the movie begins when Bond is picked up by Olga Kurykov’s Camille who notices a tail and asks sarcastically, "Friend of yours?" Bond responds, "I don't have friends." In any other iteration of Bond, the line would be merely a quip but with Daniel Craig's Bond, it's an insight into his personality. From that scene on the film can be viewed as a meditation on friendship: Can it exist within business / politics? Can you have an enemy if you're not capable of having a friend? What’s the difference between a friend and a lover? I couldn't believe how many times the word friend or friendship is uttered throughout the film: Mathis, Felix, M, Camille, Vesper's Ex, etc. I haven't heard the term friend used with such frequency since I saw River's Edge.
In the film’s penultimate scene, Bond interrogates Vesper's ex and when he notices a woman wearing the same necklace Vesper had worn he states, "I have one just like it… He gave it to a friend of mine, someone very close to me.” In a sense, the film begins with Bond rejecting the notion of friendship and ends with him accepting not only the possibility but the existence of a friend. Of course, this is certainly not a healthy understanding of friendship, as the friend in question is now deceased and their relationship was built upon duplicity.
Perhaps a cold war nut can find just as satisfying an analysis of For Your Eyes Only or a sci-fi guru can gleefully dissect the intricacies of Moonraker but for my money, Quantum of Solace is the most thought provoking Bond entry yet. Does that make it the first Bond movie to play better in the classroom than on the big screen?
This morning I went to see Up which was by all accounts a fantastic film, the highlight being the four-minute montage devoid of dialogue that perfectly visualized love in its purest form. But before the film started I was distracted by a nagging observation made about the previews that ran before the film: the large number of gross-out gags – jokes designed to make the audience recoil in disgust while simultaneously laughing.
I’ve long been fascinated by gross-out comedies and have devoted much thought to the theoretical ramifications of it as a comedic movement but until this morning I’d never considered their presence in family entertainment. Now that I think about it, booger or cooties jokes seem commonplace and in the ‘90s Nickelodeon virtually planned its entire programming around gooey substances. But I was struck by the usage and the content of the jokes I saw this morning and wonder if the gross-out gags featured in family films have escalated and become more graphic?
The three trailers in question were Imagine That, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and G-Force. All three trailers use a gross-out gag prominently as a punctuating joke. In the case of Imagine That, it’s the opening scene:
At the 0:11 mark we see a close-up shot of clumpy, spoiled milk being poured onto a bowl of cereal. The gag is created not just from the viscosity of the liquid but from the prospect that Eddie Murphy’s poor daughter might actually end up eating it. On the scale of gross-out humor this is fairly tame but it still produced an audible disgust from the sold out audience and it is significant as is chosen as the film’s introductory gag.
Next up is Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs which concludes its trailer with two gross-out gags, one visual and one verbal.
The first occurs right before the title card (1:53) and involves a sap-doused nut being violently ripped from Scrat’s furry chest, resulting in a pink underbelly and a pained yelp. 40-Year-Old Virgin anyone? (To be fair, that film went further and fully solidified the gag as gross-out by showing extreme close-ups on the removed hair and the bristling gashes on Steve Carell’s chest.) The Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs’ trailer then concludes with Sid mistakenly milking a male ram, the error of his ways being emphasized by an amplified sound effect and close-up on the ram’s eyes (2:16). While the gross-out infraction is kept off-screen, the audio track and accompanying facial expression indicates that Sid has inappropriately manhandled the ram’s reproductive organs.
Finally, there’s G-Force which uses a gross-out gag to punctuate the trailer’s moment of maximum excitement – the hamsters soaring through the air in a protective ball – with a fart joke (2:14):
This was the specific gag that got me thinking about the propensity of gross-out humor in these trailers. It was the simplicity of its insertion, how unmotivated and unnecessary it was (the trailer also ends with a “poop in his hand” line of dialogue – 2:29). The film is rated PG for “Some mild action and rude humor.” Have family films always thrived on rude humor? To the point that it serves an essential function in their marketing? Or is this a more recent trend spurred by the success of There’s Something About Mary and American Pie?
Perhaps rude humor has always been present and I just haven’t focused on it. Surely, Beethoven contained a wealth of dog slobber jokes? I love a good gross-out joke and when they’re properly executed they can be wonderfully unifying acts, leveraging the lowest common denominator appeal into a class-defying unity of mirth. But when used improperly they’re resolutely low-brow – and the three trailers under scrutiny are certainly low-brow. For the record, Up, an exemplar of the high-brow family film, contains two minor gross-out gags involving animal saliva and the lead character’s walking implement. Neither gag features in Up’s marketing and both are executed in a simple, non-glorified manner. There’s a clear distinction between these gags and the ones profiled in the above trailers. But has there always been a need for this distinction within the genre of the family film?
"It would be easy to say that by its eighth and final year, Wings was coasting on fumes but the fact of the matter is Wings never really soared that high to begin with. The pleasures on offer here are modest but dependable. The final season of Wings isn’t its best but it gets the job done." Click here to read my DVD review at PopMatters
"Last Chance Harvey isn’t particularly ambitious, and its minimal storytelling scope indicates it wasn’t designed for more than home video viewing (or perhaps in-flight entertainment), but it does offer a few certain charms. It’s the equivalent of a competently written paperback or a leftover helping of Ma’s comfort food. With the right expectations there’s nothing to be disappointed by – but there’s also nothing to be challenged by, either."
As a great fan of Joe Wright’s previous features, the slightly crass but hugely entertaining Pride and Prejudice and Atonement, it’s with a heavy sigh that I report his third film The Soloist to be a middling effort. The weight of the film eventually gets too heavy for itself as it desperately struggles to ensure a happy ending in the last twenty minutes but there is still a good amount of interest here and it confirms my suspicion that Joe Wright is one of the best middlebrow filmmakers working today.
The film marks Joe Wright’s third adaptation, culled from newspaper columns and a memoir by Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez. Robert Downey Jr. plays Lopez in the film (if only all journalists were so lucky) and Jamie Foxx stars as Nathanial Ayers, the subject of Lopez’s book. Ayers is a homeless man living in downtown LA and exhibiting qualities of schizophrenia. But he’s also a remarkable string musician, having studied at The Julliard School during his youth. The film chronicles the friendship that develops between the two men and it’s to the film’s credit that things only become saccharine during the final act.
All too often the topic of disability only appears in film when it is the subject of a ‘quest for a cure’ narrative where easy answers are delivered and miracles materialize just in time for the closing credits. The Soloist deserves recognition for attempting to buck this trend. While Lopez is guilty of pursuing a cure for a large part of the running time (but really, who wouldn’t?), a character finally tells him in regard to Ayers, “You can’t change him, all you can do is be his friend.” It’s an important message but sadly it gets sublimated during the rosy-tinted conclusion. Downey Jr.’s voiceover does mention that Ayers still suffers from dangerous outbreaks but the images in the last scene do nothing to underline that, choosing instead to highlight his charming eccentricities. For 75% of the film, Wright and his actors do a noble job of presenting the story realistically and interestingly but they fumble during the last 25%, losing all momentum and eliminating any real threat from the one scene that absolutely requires it.
The rule of Rain Man would dictate that Foxx as the mentally imbalanced character would be the flashy role while Downey Jr. as the straight-laced cynic would be the thankless supporting role. Curiously, the inverse is true in the case of The Soloist with Downey Jr. inhabiting the peach of a role while Foxx just barely manages not to be overshadowed. This seems to be a product of both the filmmakers’ intent and the performances. Of course, a quick survey of Downey Jr.’s career reminds that he never plays “the background” anyway (except maybe in U.S. Marshalls). But can it be considered showboating when it’s done by someone this talented? Downey Jr. is a joy to watch at every moment, completely engrossing from start to finish with nary a false note. The only flaw in his performance is beyond his control: the inconsistency of the amount of gray in his hair. To Foxx’s credit, he does a good job appearing and acting like someone without a home. The film has a keen awareness of homelessness and reportedly cast real homeless citizens of LA as extras (I don’t doubt it).
Even though it’s only his third film, I’ll eagerly anticipate every film Joe Wright ever makes. His films aren’t entirely successful (those who criticize The Soloist for being uneven are partly correct) but at least the man isn’t afraid to take chances. After all, he did insert Scorsese-esque steadycam shots into Pride and Prejudice and even dared to change Jane Austen’s understated ending. With his penchant for non-linear storytelling, his showy use of sound effects and music, and his fusion of highbrow and lowbrow material, I’m tempted to call him the Quentin Tarantino of literary adaptations. I’m hard pressed to think of another filmmaker who would have taken a film with this much assumed prestige and chosen to offset lengthy classical music interludes with not one, but two gags involving Downey Jr. getting doused by urine. Also of note is the bold sequence half way through the film in which the image fades away and an array of bright colors appear in synch with the classical music on the soundtrack. It’s the kind of daring synesthetic sequence one rarely sees in major studio films, the only other examples that readily spring to mind are 2001 and Ratatouille.
PopMatters is currently running a retrospective on the most memorable films of 1999 (both a banner year for movies and the year of the site's inauguration). Gross-out comedy being my forte, I submitted a short piece on American Pie.
"Ten years down the road and we can thank American Pie for giving us the screen debut of Seann William Scott, popularizing the comic styling of Eugene Levy (which paved the way for the success of Fred Willard and John Michael Higgins), raising awareness of the primarily northeastern-viewed Lacrosse, and dispersing the cheeky acronym MILF upon the world—a contribution to adolescent lexicon that I daresay will survive from generation to generation." Click here to read my entry on American Pie at PopMatters (Scroll to bottom half of the page)
"Ultimately, the film isn’t religious enough to be shown in Sunday school, but has enough of a Christian bent that if it were a book it would be shelved in the Christian Inspiration section. "
"Wading through the plethora of characters in the film’s many subplots gets to be pretty tiring, especially when the film is so clear about how it wants you to feel about each character. Amidst all these plot strands, the film chooses to ignore one of the most intriguing situations, the boy incorrectly returned to Christine."
"Age of Consent is, sadly, a rather unfortunate swan song for Powell and it’s unfortunate that this release has to remind viewers of that fact. But at any rate, the occasion for A Matter of Life and Death’s overdue arrival on region one DVD just about makes up for its inclusion in this package."
1. Happy-Go-Lucky 2. In Bruges 3. Forgetting Sarah Marshall 4. The Class 5. Man on Wire 6. Snow Angels 7. The Dark Knight 8. Redbelt 9. Paranoid Park 10. The Wrestler
Honorable Mentions: Beauty in Trouble, Burn After Reading, Revolutionary Road, Shotgun Stories, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
"While Swanson has secured her legacy in cinema thanks to Sunset Boulevard, it’s a great shame that that particular film so often overshadows the rest of her career. In Male and Female, her enunciation appears so perfect that for once in a silent film I could read the performer’s lips routinely and consistently; there was none of the marble-mouthed miming or fast-talking gibberish that so often befuddles viewers. At the same time, her elocution never borders on histrionics. The effect made me feel like I could hear her speaking the lines of dialogue, which makes it all the more tragically ironic that it was the transition to sound cinema that signaled her departure from silver screen popularity."
"Whenever presented with an open-ended prompt about film, I invariably take the opportunity to preach about the trials and tribulations faced for a comedy. It is my firm belief that comedy is the most undervalued and underappreciated genre in all of film. While other low genres like horror and science fiction are similarly neglected from critic’s best lists and awards show glory, they at least have their cult appreciation and are bestowed with annals upon annals of film theory texts devoted to their deconstruction and analysis. Meanwhile, comedy goes largely unremarked upon in all discourses except box office (even pornography receives more academic scholarship)."
"Silence pervades most of the action in Le Deuxième souffle, a French gangster film where music is used sparingly and characters are reticent (it takes seven minutes for us to receive the first line of dialogue). Director Jean-Pierre Melville aspires to create organic suspense sequences where character movement is precious and the camera is respectfully observational – and boy, does it work. The film contains a much revered heist sequence where the anticipation plays out with realistic and unbearable intensity."
"Unless you stay to the very end of the credits — in which it states that a portion of the film’s proceeds are being donated to homeless shelters and urges viewers to contribute further — the film feels like a message movie without the message."
The boys were back in town again and after some requisite all-night partying and talks with Mom, they get back down to business. Vince and E squabbled over how to get Gus Van Sant to let Vince audition for his new movie while Turtle tried to keep his relationship with Jamie Lynn Sigler secret and Drama invested his money into a hometown bar. The episode returned to the original formula of preserving Ari for short but sweet appearances to dole out a few funny lines and further the plot rather than devoting whole sub-plots around him. As such, the episode divided the screen time pretty evenly amongst the boys.
The episode saw Vince at his most unsteady and insecure despite finding comfort in an ex-girlfriend – the episode’s only superfluous element, largely due to the terrible performance by the actress. On the other hand, Adrian Grenier displayed some of his best acting to date when cool-as-a-cucumber Vince finally let down his façade in an explosive, expletive-fueled cell phone hurl. The subsequent mash-up between Vince and E was painful and unflinching (although marred by a distracting 360 degree revolving camera) and their reconciliation at the show’s end was just as bromantic as we would hope it to be.
After a season of suffering through set-back after set-back, Entourage’s hedonistic fans finally received the release they needed as Vinnie got offered the lead role in the next Scorsese film, a reworking of The Great Gatsby. It seems to me that Vinnie would be much better suited to play Gatsby than Nick Carroway but never mind if this means we’ll get to see more Scorsese cameos! I suspect the movie’s production will occur off-screen this time but hopefully the grand master will still be popping up during post-production.
One of Entourage’s strongest qualities is its ability to anticipate showbiz trends and comment on material contemporaneous to its air date rather than its shoot date. Last night we saw it with all the Gus Van Sant talk and Drama’s throwaway reference to Milk and even in the line about Joaquin Phoenix bowing out of a film which almost aligns with his supposed retirement announcement. Further in that regard, the entirety of season five feels like a reflection of America’s economic downturn what with all the dialogue about it being a bad year and hitting a rough patch. The doom and gloom is more likely a by-product of this season being written on the heels of the writer’s guild strike but it still feels like a contribution to Entourage’s eerie powers of prognostication.
While I was becoming accustomed to the show’s new tone and approach, the last five minutes did feel like a welcome return. With its promised summer 2009 airing maybe a bit more fun and sun in season six will help after this long winter of discontent. Who knows? Maybe even the economy will be on the incline by then.
"Rebecca holds the unique distinction of being the only Alfred Hitchcock film to win a Best Picture Oscar (more to that, it’s one of only three of the director’s films even nominated for the award). In retrospect, it seems absurd to think that Hitchcock – the most famous director in film history – received such little award recognition. How could this universally adored filmmaker (Have you ever heard someone say “I don’t like Hitchcock films”?) have been passed over so routinely?"
As the culmination of season five looms in the distance, Entourage delivers one of the season’s most exciting episodes, the first one this year that has had me itching to watch another episode right after its completion rather than complacently going to sleep. All season long there have been hints that the writers are angling to take the show in a new direction (Vince’s jeopardized career, Drama’s TV success, E’s new clients, Ari and the studio job) and judging by last night’s episode and next week’s preview, they might just be willing to follow through with their promise of really shaking things up.
After suffering through 30 ridiculous takes for Verner (and finally convincing me his performance in Smokejumpers wasn’t terrible), Vince and Verner had it out at each other in a frenzied shouting match that ended in Verner’s public firing of Vince. Ari jumps on a helicopter to Big Bear to pacify things but Verner’s temper grows stronger and by the end of the day they’ve scheduled a meeting with the studio to try and salvage the production. Vince is willing to make amends but Verner will hear nothing of it and storms off to see the studio chair John Ellis (Alan Dale). Verner’s psychopathic storming of the studio played out fairly over-the-top but the shots of Vince and E running after him in bewilderment keyed into one of the show’s strongest enjoyment factors – the sense of these outsiders engaging in some sort of Hollywood absurdity and not believing their eyes while being caught up in the whole madness themselves. In the end, Ellis shuts down production on the film completely (a fairly melodramatic plot development) and the boys board a plane back to Queens uttering Vinnie’s oft-quoted credo from the early seasons, “If it all falls apart then we’ll go back home”, albeit this time with considerably less spunk.
The episode’s other major development was the attention devoted to Turtle and the reveal of his background. The episode begins with Jamie-Lynn Sigler calling him up and reigniting their relationship. While their courtship doesn’t feel anywhere near as genuine as Turtle’s relationship with the car mechanic’s daughter in season 3, Jamie-Lynn is at least able to coax more information out of him (last time all we got was for Turtle to take off his hat). The self-exploration started when she pushed Turtle about his life aspirations and he squirms when he realizes he doesn’t really have any. Furthermore, we learn that Turtle fronted the money for their big move to LA through being a bookie (no wonder Vinnie is so loyal) and that his real name is Sal (a good choice on the writers’ part, not ridiculous by any means but you can also see why a guy like him would rather go by his reptilian moniker).
Next week promises more big changes with the gang heading back to New York and for the first time in the show’s history we’ll actually get to see them in their old neighborhood (last time they went back, to shoot Queens Boulevard, everything was kept off-screen during the in-between seasons ellipsis. There’s also the promise of a huge blow-out between Vince and E – yes, we’ve seen this before, but this one looks pretty serious. All in all, last night’s episode was a great set-up for what could be a series-defining season finale. The ball is in the writers’ court now. Will they conclude the series’ most conflict-filled season with a cliff-hanger ending or will things revert back to the good life?
Oh, and major credit goes to Kevin Dillon and the writers for allowing Drama to get the night’s funniest line despite his minimal screen time with his delightfully esoteric name dropping of Barbet Schroeder.
