Love / Hate Character Studies

An individual character study is a difficult cinematic feat. Especially when facing an American audience, directors seldom have a prayer of pleasing both moviegoers and mainstream critics. The result is often polarized, and that's not going to do directors any favors come awards season.

The right ensemble piece can be almost as magical as an individual character study: so it goes with standouts like Whit Stillman's Metropolitan, Kevin Smith's Clerks, and even (I daresay) Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs. (It's worth noting that all of these are independent films.) Given that just about any movie with more than one recognizable character could be called an "ensemble," I should clarify that my definition should only encompass character-driven stories. That definition is still more broad than I'd like, but it should keep Independence Day and Transformers out, which is about all I'm concerned with. Despite the effort required for a good ensemble piece, an individual character study--whether running 90 minutes or a 2+ hours--is far trickier, and often turns out flawed.

Americans played little or no part in crafting early cinematic character studies. We loved our epics, and we loved our ensembles, and no one thought better of it until the 1970s. By then, Kurosawa's Ikiru (a still from which adorns the upper left corner of this blog) was almost two decades old, and French New Wave was away to the races with everything from The 400 Blows to Le Samourai.

The '70s set the standard for America, a high bar that I personally haven't seen reached since. I've posted previously about Dude (not to be confused with Bro)-films, and two of these might fit the bill for character studies: High Fidelity and About Schmidt, mostly the latter. But even a good chunk of Warren Schmidt's journey is driven more by events in his life, not deliberate introspection or meandering. We leave that to one of Jack Nicholson's early defining performances in Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces. (Oddly enough, a bright shining star in the career of a director who otherwise did little but help Nicholson pay for the Learjet.)

What makes Five Easy Pieces work? To be frank: beats the heck outta me. But comparing it to a similar and more recent film, Greenberg, helps to clear it up.

The individual-driven story is rare today, so rare that Noah Baumbach made a rather big deal out of trying it when he wrote and directed Greenberg just last year. In Greenberg, Ben Stiller plays Roger Greenberg, a musician who never made it. He had the opportunity to sign a record deal with his band, but turned it down in the name of artistic purity. Now he's a misanthrope, and has returned to L.A. after a long residence in New York to house-sit for his more grounded and successful brother.

Juxtapose this with Five Easy Pieces: Jack Nicholson plays Robert Dupea, a musician who could have made it, but walked away from being a pianist. He's a misanthrope, and returns to his home in the Pacific Northwest to visit his dying father and see his more grounded and reasonably successful siblings.

The tones of the film are entirely different-- Ben Stiller has yet to break into a truly dramatic performance-- but the characters themselves are not. They look the past with a good amount of disdain, have little regard for their futures, and cannot seem to figure out why. Plenty of decent people would like to see either of these aged adolescents taken to the woodshed, yet their aimless yearning (or yearning aimlessness?) draws enough sympathy-- I say empathy-- to be likeable, even loveable. We all have these existential crises, these men have simply embraced them.

Nevertheless, Greenberg's story wanders far too much and settles into a romantic angle that fails to enthrall, much less convince. Rather than grow out of his funk or far beyond a few petty realizations (e.g., that he owed it to his band mates to consult with them before turning down the record deal), Greenberg finds Florence (Greta Gerwig) and they fall into a cliche "I'm OK / You're OK" relationship that will of course fail, but since the movie ends before this can happen it's not supposed to be too much of a concern. If Baumbach had made this film on the heels of Kicking and Screaming, he may have had more success, but to make such a dated film a clear decade after the '90s ended hints that a biography of Baumbach himself may be more compelling than his contrived Roger Greenberg.

Five Easy Pieces suffers no such flaws. The weight Robert Dupea carries-- a never-quite-articulated combination of guilt, fear, and anger-- burdens him throughout. Instead of a fake band-aid to treat the bad feelings, the audience never even gets the full diagnosis. We're treated to a pretty good idea, capped off with this monologue (God bless YouTube and fair use):

"We both know that I was never really that good at it, anyway."

Maybe it's story, maybe it's actors, maybe it's subtlety, maybe it's all of these and more. There obviously isn't a set formula, since character studies are so tricky and, like Greenberg, just don't work. But when they do work? Stand back. Or, literally, sit back and savor the show.

Movies I Should Loathe, but Instead Love: The Wraith

The Academy gave Matt Damon and Ben Affleck an award for the screenplay of Good Will Hunting. Each year somewhere around 1 million American college freshmen males adorn their dorm room walls with at least one Scarface poster. Fight Club is considered philosophical in some circles. In short, nobody's perfect. With this in mind, I present a series of objectively terrible films that I will gladly watch just about any time, anywhere. As with that "OTOH, Remakes" series I began in July 2009 and have not revisited since, this series may be short-lived. Consider it a New Year's resolution to make this one more fruitful, and consider that resolution as reliable as any New Year's resolution.

Installment 1: The Wraith

Just one month before Charlie Sheen launched his A-List leading-man career in Platoon (and a year before sealing the deal with Wall Street), he was greatly angering one already stern-looking Nick Cassavetes, wooing a perfect 10 Sherilyn Fenn*, giving Clint Howard a chance to show off that pre-total-bald-dome white-dude 'fro, and otherwise letting Randy Quaid enjoy a well-deserved break between his busy National Lampoon's _____ Vacation schedule.

"A Wraith, man! A Ghost! An evil spirit and it ain't cool."

In the mid-1980s southwest U.S., a band of hooligans runs the highways. Led by Packard Walsh (Cassavetes), they prey upon unsuspecting teens in sports cars (that is, what passed for sports cars in the 1980s) and force them to race. "If you lose the race, you lose your car!" The legal technicalities of gaming law and contract law aside, this allows for the hooligans to keep the losing car fair and square. And before you write this off as "boys will be boys," please note: the hooligans cheat when they race.

Packard isn't just a sociopath on the road, he's also got problems communicating. When Keri Johnson (Fenn) rejected his advances in favor of her boyfriend Jamie (Sheen, but played by Christopher Bradley in flashbacks), Packard killed Jamie with the help of his gang. Keri has nearly recovered from the horrific episode, but just as Packard seems to be settling in as king of the Arizona backdesert, a mysterious Jake (Sheen) arrives in town, quickly putting the moves on Keri and wooing her in ways Packard cannot muster due to his salty disposition.

About the same time as Jake's arrival, a mysterious , futuristic car appears to challenge the hooligans. One by one, this car-- this wraith-- exacts certain death on the gang members involved in Jamie's death. Sheriff Loomis (Quaid), mysteriously absent any time Packard is stealing cars via street racing or until after the Wraith has claimed a victim, pieces together the solution to the riddle at a distance. He is the one bulwark of wisdom among the premium-fueled, deadly adolescence.

The Wraith, in addition to my previous jabs in the plot summary, is largely an amalgamation of a soundtrack featuring Billy Idol and other '80s hair, physics that allows four-banger Dodge Daytonas to keep up with supposedly supercharged Corvettes, and a rather meandering plot connecting frivolous action sequences between scenes of country bumpkins like Sheriff Loomis standing around just letting the Wraith do his business with looks of deep contemplation. There's also some serious drug abuse (of the "huffing" variety, if I recall my D.A.R.E. education correctly) by two of the holligans, aptly named "Skank" and "Gutterboy."

So, this begs the question, why do I love this movie?

Did I already say "Sherilyn Fenn?"

Keri (Fenn) confides to Jake (Sheen) that
she enjoys Dostoevsky and political discussion.

One element is certainly nostalgia. When I was growing up in the early 1990s, Wraith was often shown as a Saturday afternoon movie on TV, but I always caught it at the half way point. Even upon reaching college, The Wraith did not get a DVD release until well into the 2000s. Even then, it was bundled together with The Gate, some Trick-or-Treat movie with Ozzy Osborne and at least one other movie I certainly wasn't going to watch. (For the record: a Special Edition of the Wraith was finally released on DVD in March 2010.) Does my quest to see The Wraith in its entirety suggest that the film represents not so much a destination, but a long fond journey? Well, maybe so. Maybe so.

In actuality: this movie is fun. The Wraith was not the first or last cobbled-together story with young actors of varying talent that was considered by producers a success if it just brought in a few hundred thousand profit (which it did, holla), but it has some gems. Rip on Billy Idol all you want, but the music works to the pent-up teen angst and especially for car races. The special effects are actually quite stellar for a $2.7 million movie-- and still look pretty good today. The Wraith car itself is pretty stinkin' cool, and the writers do not attempt to explain Jamie / Jake's resurrection-- he's just there. Just the right aura of mystery, unconcerned with confusing the audience that might want to know everything.

I love The Wraith. There, I said it.

*"Marry me, Sherilyn Fenn circa 1986" almost equals "Marry me, Grace Kelly circa 1954."

True Grit: Some Carry the Fire

Four Coen Brothers films ago, No Country for Old Men ended very closely to Cormac McCarthy’s novel, with a monologue by Sherriff Ed Tom Bell (played by Tommy Lee Jones in the film) recounting a dream about his father. This comes just after Bell avoids—perhaps deliberately—a confrontation with Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), one of the most merciless villains ever conceived. Bell describes to his wife

[I]t was like we was both back in older times and I was on horseback goin' through the mountains of a night. Goin' through this pass in the mountains. It was cold and there was snow on the ground and he rode past me and kept on goin'. Never said nothin' goin' by. He just rode on past... and he had his blanket wrapped around him and his head down and when he rode past I seen he was carryin' fire in a horn the way people used to do and I could see the horn from the light inside of it. 'Bout the color of the moon. And in the dream I knew that he was goin' on ahead and he was fixin' to make a fire somewhere out there in all that dark and all that cold, and I knew that whenever I got there he would be there. And then I woke up.

The ideal father, strong and resolute, would not have avoided Chigurh. On the other hand, perhaps with that stark last line Bell believes this dream is just that: maybe no one would really have the grit to take on the pure evil of Chigurh.

Cormac McCarthy went on to write The Road, a popular novel with a recent, decent film adaptation of its own, that redeemed the bitter ending of No Country. In Road’s post-apocalyptic future, a father and son travel through the worst of mankind, and the father carries the proverbial fire with all of the resolve that Bell could only dream of. The Coens were not involved in the film adaptation of The Road, but they may have provided their own addendum to No Country for Old Men with their latest film, the remake (or re-envisioning) of Charles Portis’s novel True Grit. The film delivers up a hero with the selflessness that we longed for in No Country and received in the The Road.

Jeff Bridges plays Rooster Cogburn, an aged Arkansas lawman whose reputation leads young Mattie Ross (Hailee Steinfeld) to offer him a reward to track down Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), the man who murdered Mattie’s father. LaBoeuf (Matt Damon) is a Texas Ranger who is already pursuing Chaney for a different murder, and he teams up with Cogburn, though their relationship is tenuous at best. Already an impressively confident 14-year-old girl, Mattie’s resolve to join the two men on the hunt is proven when she fords a river with her horse in order to catch up with him. But despite her young grit, the violence—often outright barbarism— that pervades the Indian lands where Chaney has fled is still new to her; she has a long way to go to attaining true grit.

There are a number of things to admire in this True Grit. There is not one bad performance. The Coens give us yet another very amusing court room scene, as they did in Intolerable Cruelty, where Cogburn’s no-nonsense answers to a recent arrest gone wrong introduce his character and humorously play off of the doctrine that prohibits attorneys from asking leading questions. As in some of their best films, the Coens also are unafraid to use the language of the period, and play great jokes off of old manners and customs. The cinematography wants for nothing. But ultimately, as with any film, it’s the story, and in this case the heroism, that elevates True Grit to greatness.

Rooster Cogburn is far from perfect. A drunk, and an arrogant one, his heroism at the climax of the film (with details I will spare) is unexpected. After much macho, adolescent sparring with LaBoeuf and almost giving up the hunt for Chaney, we’re left with the impression that Cogburn’s best days may be behind him. But when the time comes, his selflessness is as unquestionable as it is visceral. Whether facing bandits or snakes, he is methodical and does not hesitate to act when he must. Cogburn is not as old as No Country’s Sherriff Bell, but he is well past his prime. Although he’s not Mattie’s father, he risks his life for her as we could only hope the best fathers would. The man lives up to his legend after all.

The Coens’ True Grit may redeem the despair of their No Country film as effectively as The Road novel did the No Country novel. Indeed, Cogburn could be that man in Sheriff Bell’s dream more easily than the father in The Road. But some uneasiness remains, at least for this critic: where are today’s heroes? Why can’t we have them now? No Country is a nearly modern setting, the 1980s, whereas True Grit is set in the early 1900s and The Road in a (hopefully) never-determined future. Many of the most popular films today cast off any realistic portrayals of heroes into the future or back into antiquity. Is our only hope that a radioactive spider might bite the good-hearted newspaper photographer?

To be sure, going back to The Odyssey, legends have a place in instilling virtue. But must the vast majority of today’s cinematic heroism be seldom relatable to reality? And even when the term “hero” is brought up, must we moviegoers really endure the title of being placed on the likes of Valerie Plame? Indeed, there are indicators of a desire to see more modern fare: the heroism shown in last year’s Hurt Locker might explain why it won the Best Picture Academy Award despite so few having heard of the film before it won.

True Grit is an excellent film and yet further proof that the Coens are among America’s most gifted filmmakers, and my only complaint is that hopefully the next hero they deliver up is someone we could actually know.

The Social Network: College Drama and All That Is Capitalism

Mark Zuckerberg is, apparently, about as socially inept as the average IT guy, the one who creates his own tech kingdom at your corporate branch, government agency, school, or wherever. Such is how Mark's portrayed The Social Network; "not an asshole, just someone who's trying to hard to be one." In either case, he's America's youngest billionaire, and his creation, Facebook, drastically changed, and continues to change, online interaction.

To start, I note one of Social Network's strongest attributes: consistent intensity. Don LaFontaine, throughout his career, had to narrate at least one summer movie trailer a year that required him to voice "This summer's ultimate thrillride!," but for me (and I believe most viewers) it's an autumn drama about a dot-com startup that actually keeps the heart racing, more effectively than most of those forgettable Keanu Reeves vehicles. It's been a few days since viewing, and this still stands out the most. The intensity gives me pause, though: intensity, on its own, does not a great film make (this is especially true with one of Fincher's earlier works, Fight Club), but it can leave the mind a bit over-enthused for awhile. Thus, this review might lack objectivity that will settle in once I've calmed down.

That said, I believe David Fincher has finally made a masterpiece, with the help of Jeff Cronenweth's cinematography, Trent Reznor on the score, and a perfectly assembled cast (yes, even with respect to Justin Timberlake).

The film's timeframe is fall 2003 through fall 2004. One evening, Mark Zuckerberg wanders back to his Harvard dorm room from a breakup (brought about by his inferiority complex and passing his self-loathing on to a girl who would sink to date him), and drunkenly starts a project to take his mind off of things. The result is "Facemash," a website that uses pictures of female students from different residence servers at Harvard and compares them in pairs, allowing visitors to choose which one is the more attractive of the two. The site is a smash hit for a day or two, with traffic that crashes the residence server and leads to discipline against Mark.

Up to this point, the use of fact in the film is outstanding: Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) narrates the creation of facemash word-for-word from Zuckerberg's actual blog that he kept at the time of creation.

Not surprisingly, in addition to near-expulsion for hacking residence servers, a website comparing women based on looks leaves Zuckerberg quite unpopular with many students at Harvard, and here Mark hoped that Facemash would garner him popularity that would get him into one of the college's elite private clubs (that is, fraternites with more money and no Greek letters). It doesn't, but it does get the attention of two elite Harvard rowers who are twin brothers, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. They want Mark to code their exclusive Harvard social networking site, HarvardConnect (later named ConnectU, a social network that failed).

Mark agrees, and so the stalling begins. It's crafted as a subtle story of revenge: if you can't join them, beat them. For two months, Mark e-mails updates to the brothers (and their partner, Divya Narendra), saying that everything is going smoothly. Just days before the Facebook launch, Mark pulls the plug on working for HarvardConnect. Let the lawsuits begin!

This is but one plotline: Mark also has differences from the outset (that eventually results in a separate lawsuit) with his initial CFO and friend, Eduardo Saverin. As Facebook blossoms, the tensions only become worse.

Mark is about 19 years old at this point, as are most of his business associates. The Winklevoss brothers are perhaps around 21. It takes the entrance of Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake), the seemingly washed-up founder of Napster, for an adult to come onto the scene. And he's around the ripe old age of 25.

College drama is easily forgotten by most: in college, conflicts disappear just as easily as they arise. Many adults never make better friends than the ones they had in college, because these are the guys and gals who knew them before they were somebody, who liked them even when there was nothing they could possibly get other than camaraderie. In college drama, all is easily forgiven. But what if college drama is worth billions of dollars? Such are the stakes in The Social Network; regardless of the film's historical accuracy, the lawsuits surrounding Facebook's origin continue even today.

Aside from fast-paced drama, I most appreciate Social Network's portrayal of the intensity of innovation. Harvard educated both Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, though neither of them actually graduated. Two of America's richest entrepreneurs. Like Gates, Zuckerberg took ideas from others (in this case campus acquaintances, pre-existing websites (MySpace and Friendster were established before Facebook), etc.) and jumped on it. Perhaps the Winklevoss brothers did have the idea to make an exclusive online social network (restricting membership to college students with a ".edu" address for a specific college), but they handed it off to a kid and proceeded to sit on their hands and wait. Not surprisingly, they missed the bus (but walked off from their first suit with somewhere around $60 million, and are still looking for more).

Capitalism, or the free market, gets blamed for lots of things. We're well past the age of Adam Smith, and live in an time where government spending (that is, spending tax dollars paid by residents who earned them) is believed to actually prime the economy, despite nearly a century of history that proves otherwise. Facebook is considered a marvel, and the company is held in high esteem by liberals and conservatives a like (people of all political stripes utilize it for their respective causes). Everyone loves innovation and invention, but those who oppose free markets fail to explain how their alternatives provide as much (or sometimes any) incentive to create new things.

Is Facebook really better for society? The debate continues, but it's definitely a hot commodity. And it's still free to use, in exchange for a whole lot of personal data. The fascinating aspect of Sean Parker's entrance is that until he tells Mark about the potential of Facebook (billions instead of millions), Mark is overly cautious, even timid. Facebook was not entirely Mark's baby, but he surrounded himself with largely the right people and, years later, Facebook is probably here to stay for quite some time.

Feelings get hurt in free markets. People fail (Exhibit A: Who even remembers the Winklevoss ConnectU?). The ones who succeed do so because they produce what people want. It's sometimes a messy business, business, but 99.9% of the time the ends to justify the means.

That other .1%? Let the courts figure it out. Lawyers gotta eat, too.

The Miniseries: Where's the Love, America?

HBO begins a new miniseries this weekend, The Pacific. It's the first much-anticipated mini in America since, well, Band of Brothers. Once a decade, eh?

Considering that American critics often scoff at films with running times over three hours even in instances when such length is warranted, perhaps most non-HBO miniseries are doomed on arrival in the United States. On the other hand, the advent of TV-on-DVD and TiVo has led to plenty of weekend marathons: I know I'm not the only one who can plow through a 13-episode season of Mad Men or The Shield in two or three days (some prefer doing it one sitting). Given this not-too-uncommon approach, I think it's fair to give the miniseries a good plug. Long a staple in England and elsewhere, it's only in rare instances that a mini is produced in America or by Americans. As basic cable networks move more and more into original programming (e.g., both series I just mentioned), shorter seasons are required to ensure the right per-episode budget. Why not aim for more one-shot style programming?

Many minis come from novels, and a quick comparison shows that given the right amount of running time a novel can be adapted far more faithfully (i.e., better) than in a feature film. Jane Austen provides good examples: though the 127-minute Pride and Prejudice (2005) is quite good, it does not live up to the BBC's 300-minute mini of the same title (1995). Even Sense and Sensibility (1995), a bona fide Hollywood masterpiece, cedes ground to a more recent mini (2008). By way of introduction to my fellow American viewers, I offer three of my personal favorite minis:

Brideshead Revisited (1981)

Recently victimized by an awful Hollywood adaptation, Evelyn Waugh's novel of friendship, Catholicism, and the decay of the British aristocracy following World War I also enjoys the privilege (even 30 years later) of being standard-bearer for all other minis. "Spared no expense" does not always produce art (e.g., this, and, oh yeah, this), but for Brideshead it was essential. The dialogue and narration is taken almost verbatim from the novel and supplemented with cinematography that would better suit the big screen (especially considering the average size of televisions in 1981). Though only Jeremy Irons enjoys prominence in America today, the series also launched Anthony Andrews, who's continued to own almost every part since (my previous lazy post features a clip from Under the Volcano, a film that benefits from a small but integral supporting role by Andrews).

The story of Brideshead is a sort of bell curve that traces Charles Ryder's (Irons's) life from college through middle age and his experience with the Flytes, a very Catholic, very wealthy and very troubled family. It begins with a deep friendship between Charles and the youngest male Flyte, Sebastian (Andrews), but then transitions into Ryder's adulterous love for Sebastian's sister Julia. A descent from skeptical agnosticism to full-blown atheism parallels this. An otherwise self-indulgent lifestyle leaves one quite angry and unsympathetic to Charles.

The bell curve slowly inches down into despair, but it suddenly swoops up, prompted by the sudden re-appearance of God, Whom Charles made every (seemingly successful) effort to banish. This is shocking, even devastating, and one of the most realistic, faithful portrayals of Christianity put onto film. I suspect those with faith will recognize God's victory with relief, perhaps even relish, and only hope those who empathize with Charles's efforts to destroy God learn more of Christianity from their viewing experience rather than take it as mortar to keep building walls.

Band of Brothers (2001)

The jury is still out on The Pacific, but it has a lot to live up to. Even though Band of Brothers is one of the few American-financed minis, it was produced entirely in England. The work is adapted from a book by Stephen Ambrose of the same title, and it is very well-regarded (or at least heard of) by many TV-watching Americans.

The series follows the exploits of Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division in World War II, from basic training through D-Day and all the way to the end of the war. Within this narrative are various stories of individuals, with most respective episodes focusing on different members of the company. Since this is such a popular series, and because its popularity will only spike again in light of The Pacific, there is not too much to add but my own recommendation. If you haven't watched Band of Brothers, do so.

The Last Place on Earth (1985)

In 1911, just prior to World War I, there were still parts of Earth unseen by man. One place was the South Pole. Roald Amundsen of Norway and Robert Scott of Great Britain both had their sights on this pole. Their respective attempts were nominally scientific expeditions, but there was no hiding the potential prestige that would come to the explorer who first conquered the Antarctic (not to mention his country). It was a race.

Like Brideshead, Last Place on Earth is perfected visual craftsmanship. Perhaps it's silly to say, but one can almost feel how cold it is in Antarctica just by watching. The acting, from lead roles by Martin Shaw (Scott) and Sverre Ousdal (Amundsen) down to a small supporting part by Hugh Grant (his second acting job) is excellent. And the story never lets up. Unlike the admittedly slow (though that's not to say boring) pace of Jane Austen minis, even the less dramatic parts of the narrative convey tension, perhaps even dread: Antarctica is not a place to visit, but a force to be reckoned with.

Last Place on Earth pulls no punches against Scott and what I can only classify as his distinct pre-WWI British arrogance. Some reviewers have called some of this criticism unfair. Nevertheless, it is fascinating to see the difference between the explorers and their expeditions. Both take to the race with vigor, but only Amundsen appreciates the danger. The expeditions each face setbacks and danger, but where the Norwegians conquer the British blunder. Perhaps there is no better film that juxtaposes a narrative of victory and one of tragedy so well.

Each of these minis are 5/5 stars, and well-worth owning for repeated viewings.

As I mentioned earlier, the miniseries is unfortunately under-utilized. I recently watched the made-for-TV Pirates of Silicon Valley and think it had all the makings of a miniseries, but was instead crammed into about 90 minutes. Even then, some stories that are made into minis (like ESPN's The Bronx is Burning) are so crammed with commercials they hardly ever get around to telling a coherent story (though, for sports fans, perhaps quick-burst clips are the way to go). Nevertheless, there are a number of great miniseries out there, and they live up to some of the best films.

Cinematic Morsels, Courtesy of YouTube

Some lesser-known films I've seen recently (and even some popular ones) have made appearances on YouTube. I don't know what their respective public domain status is, but as long as they're up they serve as a quick preview (and far better than trailers in many instances) for movies some readers may be interested in.

Admittedly, I have some reservations about clip-dropping because they're out-of-context and thus don't give the full effect. But I just gotta. And if this doesn't lead to viewing the whole film, better you get a part than nothing at all.

Lacombe, Lucien (1974). The devastating ending of Louis Malle's epic. It's beautiful enough to stand on its own, but this film is a must-see:



(Link fixed 3-14-10)

Under the Volcano (1984). John Huston is best known for his films with Bogart, but his career lasted far past the 1940's and produced plenty of films of equal worth. Albert Finney's performance as a functioning alcoholic is the best I've ever seen:



Wise Blood (1979). More John Huston. Perhaps the best performance of Brad Dourif's career as Hazel Motes. I didn't believe Flannery O'Connor could be faithfully adapted to film. I was wrong:



Brazil (1985). Terry Gilliam's greatest work. Everyone should see this movie. This is what bureaucracy looks like:



Ikiru (1952). It's the time of year for regular It's a Wonderful Life screenings. Nothing wrong with that, but this year try a little Kurosawa instead:



(Link changed 3-14-10)

Feel free to link to others in the comments!

A Load of B.S. - On the return of the Boondock Saints

I was not the first at Plymouth-Salem High School to discover The Boondock Saints around 1999. The film had a very limited theatrical release, and I don't believe Detroit or Ann Arbor fit the bill. Instead, Troy Duffy's cinematic orgy of death came to the Midwest via Blockbuster Video. With the cheaper printing of DVDs, many Blockbuster locations remain a great place to find direct-to-video trash like Cruel Intentions 3, while classics like Cool Hand Luke are only found in the online catalog.

On recommendation from the only other bona fide film buff in the tenth grade, I sought out the original and, like any 15-year-old Reservoir Dogs fan, fell in love. Vengeance, but in God's name. At the time I was impressed. Anyway, I was perhaps the second at Plymouth-Salem High School to discover Boondock Saints around 1999.

Ten years later, on the eve of the trailer for Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day, I could officially opine "Who cares?"

Six guns. No aiming required.

Norman Reedus and Sean Patrick Flannery certainly look 10 years(+) older, and I'm sure the plot goes a long way towards explaining their prolonged absence, but it's very hard to give a vigilante story new flavor, especially in a series. The original film (like all vigilante films) plays off the worst of gut instinct: revenge. "If only someone would get these drug dealers, rapists, bartenders(?) off the streets, then things would be better." The law is not a solution to these problems, but a hindrance. Ambiguously called by the Lord to dish out a good dose of smite to the South Boston underworld, the McManus brothers (with the help of comedy well-worn with frat boys reciting "Taking your f****ing rope" for the past decade) proceed to "kill everyone." And, with their silly sidekick, a cat.

This kind of treatment can only stay fresh for so long. Rather than recognize the calamity that is sure to follow in any instance of prolonged vigilantism (that is, the collapse of the rule of law), the Saints are elevated to folk heroes-- the people we all wish we had the "guts" to be. Perhaps the sequel will add something new to the equation but, as deceiving as trailers may be in some cases, this doesn't appear to be such a case.

The two best films on vigilantism are Death Wish (1974) and Taxi Driver (1976). Both Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) and Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) are sociopaths, and the films take an honest approach to the derangement that leads to vigilantism and the lasting effects of such behavior. The four Death Wish sequels should serve enough of a warning to Troy Duffy to leave his original cult classic alone, but given that Duffy was actually let behind a camera again to begin with, we can't exactly expect him to branch out at this point.

Perhaps the hardest part for me is the illusion Boondock Saints projects like select other Hollywood films (such as Fight Club) that there's something clever or thought-provoking behind the story. There isn't. Unfortunately, references to God (and Marx) seem to have that effect of "Man, it just makes you think, you know?" Thinking about actually studying either subject? Fat chance. But maybe someday. Here's hoping.

I close with a little self-pat-on-the back for my previous post on the utter farce that is the Saw series. Sure enough, while I have only seen the first installment, the advertising for the sixth (!) film confirms just how simple-minded this pseudo-philosophical dirt really is:

Mindless entertainment indeed.