Action Guys

I don't have anything against Daniel Craig as an actor,

except that he is boring. Even with his steroided uber body. But I do resent the current producers of Casino Royale for continuing the downward spiral of the action series to the point where I checked out after half an hour and couldn't care less what I might have missed.

Crank is a decidely less ambitious and lower tier escapade, which is part of what makes it much more entertaining than the current 007 franchise product.

And its star, Jason Stratham, a natural athlete with a model's grace and a strong film presence was an obvious oversight in the Bond franchise search for an actor who could have brought off the pre-Connery rough rogue of Casino Royale. Too bad. But I will look forward to the next Stratham actioner and will probably never see another Craig--pumped biceps or not.

The crimes continue

David Fincher extends the Zodiac killer's reach into the 21st Century. The Zodiac committed mayhem on a few innocent bodies but Fincher commits tedium and boredom a few million complicit minds. Let's face it, we even paid for the privilege of sitting through over 2 and a 1/2 hours of drab acting and mindless running about in the rain as if every second counted in gathering material to write a book about crimes that took place a decade and two before. Pointless pointless pointless.

The usual critics were also complicit in touting this dour and hang-dog meandering as something carrying meaning and portent. As least now you have been warned.

BORAT actually finds time to bore in its 84 brief minutes.

BORAT is okay. It has its good moments. But overall I guess I have to say that my expectations, if not my testicles, exceeded Baron Cohen's grasp.

The effort is there, but the Farrelly Brothers are more entertainingly crude with DUMB AND DUMBER, funnier with THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY and way more subversive with KINGPIN than anything in Borat; with Kingpin probably being the best of them all.

The good thing about the Ali G show was its brevity; only the best stuff made it to film. Borat would cut down nicely to about six skits and 40 minutes.

Oscar Watch

I can't say that I thought much about LITTLE CHILDREN. What I thought was that it was a pretty intentional AMERICAN BEAUTY wannabee. It does present some fairly accurate but generally cliche observations of dysfunctional families in suburban America, but I didn't see any arc of purpose or resolution in the story or character development.

I thought the peformances were fairly good, but nothing I would vote any award to. The best performance was by an unseen actor. The FRONTLINE style narration by FRONTLINE narrator Will Lyman is skillfully modulated, inflected and droll, and the movie seems flat when his wry, anthropological comments are not there to enliven the soundtrack and guide us into amused reaction.

This is in that category of films that gives audiences and critics a chance to feel superior to their friends and neighbors. Since we see how badly they suck, it is obvious that we don't. That pandering to the reader and viewer is the only thing this movie is about, it seems to me.

Labyrinths

Many years ago I wrote a film for the American Playhouse series on PBS. The title was Labyrinthos. When it was broadcast in 1982 the producers had changed the title to the meaningless King of America. And I mean truly meaningless because the film’s protagonist possessed not regal bearing, ambitions or exalted expectations. He would have been totally happy as a workman at any occupation that would have rewarded an honest day’s labor with an honest salary and a little dignity.

This young Greek immigrant, however, was not to be so lucky. Seduced from his homeland by promises of gainful employment, instead he found himself frustrated and befuddled by the abusive and degrading challenges of industrial exploitation. Something still quite familiar in America.

My thoughts on the labyrinth are generated by a recent viewing of PAN’S LABYRINTH. My earlier use of labyrinth as a metaphor was based on the familiar and usual concepts of the labyrinth as a disorienting place of danger and dread from which the only exit was the point of entry.

As I watched PAN’S LABYRINTH, I was curiously surprised to see that, though the physical appearance of the Faun’s abode was grim and ominous, it was actually a place of refuge, even salvation. The only danger it engages comes from outside sources. Writer-director Guillermo del Toro turns the classical concept of the labyrinth inside out. A more accurate designation for this structure—and title for the movie—would something like “Temple of the Faun”. This would not make the movie any better but it would give me less to criticize.

Actually, I enjoyed Pan’s Labyrinth too much to bother with any real criticism. For differing opinions on this film you can check Peterme’s commentary and my replying comment on this site: http://www.peterme.com/?p=510

I wasn't planning to see Pan's Labyrinth until I discovered that del Toro was also the co-writer and director of The Devil’s Backbone. This story unfolds in a boy’s orphanage in the aftermath of the Spanish civil war. The living conditions are dire and their stark presentation is not for the squeamish. It is, among other things, a ghost story, but the great horrors are inflicted only by the living.Despite the grimness of these two films, I don't feel that del Tory is either a cynic or fatalist. Nonetheless, he doesn't leave his audience with much room for hope.

Good Title

It looks like Babel is becoming the front runner for Best Picture Oscar, but somehow, I still have more regard for the Motion Picture Academy than to believe that those voters will roll over for this particular Critics' Darling. The picture does have a few good moments--none of them involving Brad Pitt or Cate Blanchett--but not enough good moments to override the restless twistings in my seat.

I suggested that the other Guillermo represented at the Academy this year had a dark vision but did not seem to be a cynic, but this Guillermo is not merely a cynic, he is a flat out nihilisitc neurotic. After he puts his characters through some preposterous and idiotically motivated behavior in order to punish them for being human, he signs off his film with a dedication to his children who-- Bring a bright light into the darkness of this world. Gimmeafuckin' break!

As with their previous films, Arriaga and his writer continue to use a story structure that involves cutting back and forth between different plot lines; the better to keep the skimpiness of their ideas from being too easily evident. Of course, each of these characters has some tenuous connection with the others, but these connections, introduced to imply some cosmic significance to the irrelevant little stories, are totally incidental and gratuitous and have absolutely no bearing on the fates of each other.

So much of the movie is merely incidental that I can't be bothered with specifics. Except maybe one. This entire nightmare is kicked off when a couple of innocent, young North African brothers take mindless pot shots from a hillside at a tour bus on the road below. I mean, what kind of idiots are these? Then the real kicker comes when the rifle sharpshooter takes aim at the bus when it is about a mile and half away. Now the shooter is several hundred yards up a hill on the RIGHT side and in FRONT of the bus when he shoots. When the big bus gradually comes to a stop, it is reasonable to assume that the engine of the driver has been hit. But we learn nothing at that time. Instead, we cut to one of the other stories for a while. Eventually, we return to the bus, but now we are inside it, apparently before the shooting as it is just cruising along and the tourists are engaged in their regular behaviors. Cate Blanchett rests her weary head on the the bus window in the middle and on the LEFT side of the bus. Shortly, a bullet enters cleanly through her window and into her neck area. This means that the bullet from the hillside traveled over a mile at about a 45º angle down toward the front of the bus, overshot the bus, then circled back and slammed into the left mid side of the bus at a 180º angle. This kind of shoddy filming and editing is usually the result of inadequate pre-planning. It can also be the result of indifference and disrespect of the audience, which is what the majority of this movie suggests to me: a false trajectory of story telling through time and space.

Award Season

I don't go into movie theaters much any more. Both the product and the audiences leave a lot to be desired. But the Award Season and its Guild and Academy freebies does draw me out a little.

HOLLYWOODLAND was a bit of a pleasant surprise. Not much of a story, but a fairly good mood and some excellent acting by the whole cast. Adrien Brody got some pretty short shrift from the critics, but his is an excellent performance, so much so that I am looking forward to his future work.

FIND ME GUILTY, now on DVD, is good entertaining corn, though based on the actual trial of a large New York, New Jersey "Family." It was especially satisfying to see Vin Diesel return to a human level character performance. His action personna of recent films has overshadowed his previously recognized acting ability and charm.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE is a trite, predictable and irritating feel-good fable of a dysfunctional family that becomes an unmotivated love-functioning family during a serious of improbable and uninventive on-the-road experiences. This movie is the only box-office hit of this group, but then Dr. Phil does reign on TV.

HUNGER

As a high school truant in the late 1940s, I spent many daytime hours in Cleveland's Lower Mall Theater. This specialized movie house at the commercial edge of downtown Cleveland was an absolute treasure trove of foreign and revival films. Having grown up and thrived on the luxury of film revival theaters, I can really appreciate what video, especially DVD, can bring to me.

My revival house experience was not your standard movie-going group entertainment. The Lower Mall, at least in the daytime, attracted very few customers. I sat alone in the dark, relating only to the movie, not the scattered few others in attendance. I think porno theaters are today's comparable experience. It was, like DVD is now, essentially a personal, not group experience.

Watching Knut Hamsun's HUNGER on DVD tonight was much like it would have been in the Lower Mall, that is to say, the only way I would have wanted to watch it. I never even mentioned to Julie that I had the DVD and was going to view it. I know she would never sit still for a 40-year-old, sub-titled, black-and-white downer film from Norway.

I watched it alone and was caught up in every frame of every scene. The only distractions were my own wild thoughts and inner comments on the action, the actors and the intense predicament of the central character. This character is focused on like almost no other in film history. And the performance by Per Oscarsson won Best Actor at many film festivals such as Cannes in 1966 and America's National Society of Film Critics Award in 1969.

DVD, Blockbuster Online, Netflix and a handful of specialized video stores are now the source for the best film viewing experience in America today. The Cineplex be damned.