A Superhero Glut?

Ross Douthat, of The Atlantic, worries that there is a looming glut of superhero movies.


I agree that it is very likely that his prognostication is on the mark: I fully expect for there to be a surplus of superhero movies over the next several years. What puzzles me, however, is that Ross seems to think that there's something unusual about this.


For all its ballyhooed liberalism, when it comes to financing projects, Hollywood is actually a very conservative town. Producers don't generally like to risk putting their money on risky projects. As a consequence of this, Hollywood tends to be self-imitative. When a movie is a success, the first thing most studios will want to do is to make a sequel. If several movies in a genre succeed, it's a safe bet that more movies in that genre will be produced.


The sorts of gluts that Ross is worried about are perfectly common. For decades, the studios cranked out an endless sequence of westerns and musicals. In the 70's, cop dramas were all the rage. In the 80's and 90's, you couldn't have summer without big action movies stuffed to the brim with explosions and car chases. We also passed through a science fiction craze and, if it weren't for a number of failures, I'm sure that we'd be neck deep in fantasies right about now.


While this type of repetition can get annoying, this is a case where the market invariably corrects itself over time. When people get tired of a genre, they stop spending money on it and as other genres become more successful the old is replaced by the new. I would not be surprised to see a lot of superhero movies out in the next five years, but I would be shocked if they were still making as many of them ten or fifteen years from now. Sooner or later people are going to decide that enough is enough.


Ross Douthat is not a fool when it comes to cinema. He's quite familiar with the history of the medium and I'm sure that he realizes that these movies are part of a larger cycle, so his concern is a bit puzzling. I suspect that the real nature of his concern might be found we he frets that "if we aren't careful, the next generation of Coppolas and Scorseses, De Niros and Streeps will spend the best years of their creative lives toiling away on Spiderman 8 or X-Men Origins: Kitty Pryde."


It would, indeed, be a sad thing if the next generation of talented actors were to find themselves trapped in superhero roles, especially given the risk of typecasting. This is not a trivial concern. One can consider the effect that Star Wars had on the Careers of Mark Hamil and Carrie Fischer (and I wonder if Elijah Wood will ever regret playing Frodo); however, I think that a case can be made that the more popular a genre becomes, the less likely it is that new talents will find themselves trapped in them.


The reason for this is that directors and producers want to hire the very best talent that they can afford for their productions. Likewise, actors tend to compete for those roles that are the most lucrative. This means that the most sought after roles will tend to go to the so-called A-List actors (with a similar effect for the directors). The next young De Niro won't be playing Iron Man precisely because the role is going to go to Robert Downey Jr whose already established his credentials.


This might sound like a bad thing for Downey and it would be if he had no choice in the matter but, being an A-List actor, he has his choice of roles. The only reason for him to play Iron Man is because he wants to be in the Iron Man movie. No matter how saturated the market becomes, there will always be alternative roles (even lucrative ones) and no A-List actor or director will ever find themselves in a position where they are forced to make a movie where the principle character is wearing tights (and we're not talking Shakespeare).


As for the up-and-coming B-List actors and directors who have great potential, no one will hold it against them if they find themselves compelled to take frivolous roles. Hollywood well understands the concept of paying one's dues and so long as those bright talents can avoid the pitfall of typecasting, I don't think that such efforts will especially hurt their careers. And if they do succumb to typecasting, there's nothing especial about the superhero genre that promotes it. Good actors (and even directors) have fallen prey to that trap in every genre and it is simply something that they all need to be aware of.


So why is Ross concerned? I suspect the real reason is not that he fears that good actors will be forced to play genre roles but that he fears that they will be tempted by such roles. I think that Ross loves the cinema and that, as much as he is willing to tolerate and even enjoy the occasional superhero lark, he wants the best actors playing the roles that he considers to be the most serious, just as he wants the best directors to be working on those works of art that exemplify all that cinema can be.


Mind you, I could be wrong. I don't know Ross Douthat personally and this supposition should be read as conjecture. Never the less, if that is the root of his concern, I think he worries for naught. The very best directors aren't going to feel compelled to follow the crowd. When Kubrik made 2001: A Space Odessey and A Clockwork Orange it wasn't because he thought that he had no choice but to make science fiction (indeed, he made them at a point where most directors were disdaining the genre). Likewise, the De Niros of the world will do as they will precisely because they are 800 pound gorrillas who are fully aware of the weight they can throw.


But even if some top-mark director or actor desires to make a genre film, so what? They are adults and it is up to them to decide what is and is not dignified for them to do. Robert Downey Jr.'s Oscar isn't tarnished because he decided to don a gold and red suit just as Kubrik wasn't diminished for dipping into the horror genre with The Shining. Whether or not someone like Ross thinks that such projects are unworthy of the participants is irrelevant so long as those participants have any choice in the matter and I don't believe that he's made the case that they don't.

On the Successes and Failures of Superhero Movies

Natalie and I saw the new Iron Man movie over the weekend and were much impressed by it. So much so, in fact, that it led to a late-night discussion at Denny's (which is the natural environment for late-night discussions) over why the Iron Man movie worked (in our opinion) so well and why so many other superhero movies have been disappointments. This, in turn, led me to consider the general factors that influence the success or failure of such efforts and why making superhero movies is a risky (albeit potentially lucrative) venture.

Character Matters
Outsiders to the genre often make the mistake of thinking that superhero movies are primarily, or even only, about the pyrotechnics and the effects. They believe that people who like superheros are only really interested in over the top fights where hyper-muscular beings punch one another into and through major structures.

Given that the central defining characteristic of the genre is, in fact, super powers (or their technological equivalent), such a misconception is understandable and, indeed, a superhero comic that never had super-powered combat scenes would be rather dull. Never the less, a comic that focused solely on fight sequences and spectacle would also be rather dull for the typical fan of the genre. Big fights are a part of the draw but what really keeps the attention of fans and leads fans to a state of loyalty to a title or a character are the story lines and, even more fundamentally, the characters in those stories.

If you ask a fan why a given character is his favorite, the answer is rarely only going to be that said character has cool powers. More often, the real reason is that the character is an interesting person and the fan has come to know and love that character's persona.

A lot of adaptations pay only minimal attention to their characters who are often treated as mere props for the powers that those characters possess. A good example of both successful and unsuccessful character adaptation can be found in the X-Men movies. Hugh Jackman has been justifiably praised for bringing the character of Wolverine to life in a manner that is simultaneously true to the comic as well as being interesting in its own right. By contrast, Halle Barry's Storm comes across as flat and lackluster in spite of the fact that she does, indeed, look the part and in spite of the fact that her character exhibits all of the powers that the Storm of the comics possesses.

Seriousness
Seriousness is a double-edged sword. Superhero comics are based upon a basically unrealistic premise: that there exists humans who have demi-godlike powers. On top of that, the tropes and storylines lend themselves to silliness. Pick nearly any hero and look up his or her entry on Wikipedia and it's difficult not to walk away with a feeling that the entire history of the character is built upon an endless layer of absurdities. Even the most grim and gritty stories in the genre have an essential silliness built into them.

In spite of that, if the stories are the work at all, they must take themselves seriously. The genre demands a willing suspension of disbelief (SoD) from the audience and, given how deeply at odds to reality the very fabric of the genre is, it is a very easy thing for an audience to lose that sense of suspension. A good superhero story has an internal logic that it needs to adhere to in order to maintain the SoD. Many directors, however, think that the unrealism of the genre means that they can approach it frivolously. Joel Shumacher's Batman films are good demonstration of why this is a bad idea. By presenting the audience with a camp environment that went out of its way to emphasize its childishness, he made a series of films that existed only to be mocked.

It is, however, possible to be too serious. The genre is flexible and artists such as Frank Miller and Alan Moore have proven that, in capable hands, it is possible to use the genre to create serious works of art. Never the less, most superhero stories suffer from efforts to turn them into high art. I suspect that this was at the core of what went wrong with Ang Lee's adaptation of The Hulk. What ought to have been a fun and enjoyable movie was turned into something dense and opaque in an attempt to create high art. While the character of the Hulk does lend itself to a certain degree of introspection regarding the conflict of reason and emotion (and any number of other topics), at the end of the day it's a story about a man who occasionally turns into a giant green monster. Even though Lee is a perfectly capable director, his desire to turn the Hulk into something intellectual and serious was a case of poor judgment.

The Fan Boy Effect
The fans of a comic series are the best and worst friends that a director has. A good film must court the fan base but, at the same time, it needs to appeal to an audience that may not be especially (or at all) familiar with the character.

Hard core fans tend to be obsessives. Any deviation from the source material is looked upon with grave suspicion and every decision a director makes is subject to endless rounds of second guessing in the chat rooms of the world.

A good director needs to know how to thread those worlds. The best directors are those that show that they understand and respect the original works while, never the less, being willing and able to modify the stories for the needs of the screen. It is entirely possible to be too faithful to an original work just as it is possible to be too contemptuous of it.

When Sam Rami was working on the first Spiderman movie, there was a great deal of debate in the fan community over Rami's decision to make Peter Parker's web shooting ability part of his body as opposed to the web-canisters that the Spiderman of the comics uses. Many fans felt that organic webs were a blatant and disrespectful violation of the canon. Rami and his supporters argued that, in spite of the canisters prominent history in the mythos, they were an unnecessary and, frankly, unbelievable element when translated to film. I believe that history has proven that Rami's intuition was correct: having Parker shoot the webs out of his wrists is much more intuitive for anyone who isn't already intimately familiar with the original stories.

The Perils of Origin
As a general rule, when films have sequels, the first movie is generally better than the second, the second is generally better than the third, and so forth. Although the sample size is smaller, superhero movies seem to follow rule where the first movie is usually weaker than the second, the second is usually the strongest, with subsequent movies being progressively weaker than either.

It has been suggested that the reason for this is that the first movie is almost invariably burdened with the task of telling the superhero's origin. This can seem rather counter-intuitive to comic fans given that good origin stories are the stuff of legend. Who would Peter Parker be without the tragedy of his Uncle's death? How much of Superman would be left if not for the elaborate myth of the end of Krypton? Origins aren't only crucial to understanding who these heroes are, they are some of the very best stories that the genre has produced.

Why then are origin stories such a detriment when brought to film. A big part of it is that film and comics are different media. A story that works well in the bright four-color paneled world of a comic can easily seem contrived and even fairly boring when brought to screen. Paradoxically, this is particular true when the character is popular enough that the general public is familiar with the character. Most people know that Superman was born on Krypton, that he was sent to Earth, and that he was raised by the Kents. Consequently, being forced to sit through an origin that they already know can be a boring thing. When people are less familiar with a character (as is the case with, say, Iron Man) it's actually easier to interest the audience in that story.

Because the origin story is such an integral part of the genre, however, directors are loath to dispense with it. So a good director has to find a way to tell a familiar story in an unfamiliar way. Both Tim Burton's original Batman movie and Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins dealt with the origin of Batman but even though the basic elements remained the same the execution, style and emphasis were wholly different. Consequently, very few people felt that the latter simply retrod the ground laid down by the former. Doing this, however, requires an exceptional degree of talent and many directors simply aren't up to the task of making the origin story as interesting as it needs to be.

And So Forth
Anything that can make a non-superhero movie bad can do the same to a genre film. There are an infinite number of ways to ruin a film from slipshod continuity to poor casting to tin-eared dialog, etc. All the ordinary problems that face any movie confront the director of a superhero film. However, in addition to those normal pitfalls there are additional ones. A good movie can be ruined by bad special effects. Sometimes the very project is an uphill battle because the character is either not well known outside of the genre (such as Elektra) or is simply not that great of a character to being with (such as the Sub-Mariner).

There are so many difficulties facing this style of movie that one might feel surprised that any of these movies can succeed, much less succeed spectacularly; however, when a superhero movie does hit all the right notes, it can tap into that same mythic well that makes the comics such an enduring part of our cultural landscape. The original Superman movie promised that we would believe that a man could fly... and we really did. Rami's Spiderman brought us into the conflicted world of Peter Parker and made us see why his powers were such a burden upon him. People were able to see past the obvious spectacle of the X-Men movies into the deeper message about prejudice and bigotry.

Most of all, a good superhero movie can also bring out a feeling that is purely childlike without being at all childish. It can make us feel happy, joyful and hopeful. It is for these very reasons that the misfires and the failures are so utterly disappointing. It's not merely that the failed movies are bad, it's that we sense that they could have been something so much better than they were. Granted, one may well wonder if any adaptation of something like The Punisher or Daredevil could have risen to the occasion, but it remains the case that we always hope that they will and on those occasions when such a movie does succeed it is a genuinely marvelous thing.

Iron Man Trailer to be Made Into Movie

I LOL'ed.

Zombie Strippers

I suspect that, much like Snakes on a Plane, the title of Zombie Strippers really does say everything that you need to know in order to make an informed choice about whether or not this movie is right for you.

Quickie

I wanted to drop everyone a quick note to let them know that the move to coming along well. Natalie is here and helping with the last minute arrangements. My last day of work was today (apparently, they'll miss me) but I already have at least one interview set up and don't expect to have any trouble finding work (knock on laminar surface). I'll be picking up the truck on Saturday, packing it on Sunday with the help of friends, doing a final clean up on Monday, and heading out on Tuesday morning which will, hopefully, mean that I'll be in my new home by next Friday.

In the meanwhile, if you've been wondering what was up with that whispered sequence at the end of Lost in Translation, someone's taken the effort to digitally process it to extract the dialog. Obviously, don't watch the clip if you prefer the mystery.

Unstructured Trailer

Normally, I wouldn't link to a trailer, but this trailer for an, as yet, untitled movie by J.J. Abrams (of Lost fame) is especially cool. Apparently it's for an upcoming giant monster movie.

Of course, there's no way to know whether the movie will be good or bad but I think that if it retains the POV attribute of the trailer, it'll certainly be an interesting variation of the genre.

This Explains a Lot

One of the features of Netflix is that it tells you what other movies were enjoyed by the people who enjoyed a given movie.

I think that the following extract goes a long way towards accounting for the persistence of awful movies.

Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2

Enjoyed By Members Who Enjoyed:

Shark Tale
Batman & Robin
Garfield: The Movie
Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
Catwoman

Stardust

I may give a more detailed review later on but, in the meanwhile, I want to encourage everyone to consider seeing the movie Stardust.

The trailers and commercials for the movie are, frankly, horrible. It doesn't seem like the people who are marketing it quite know how to handle what they have and the result is that they give the impression of something that's cheap and cheesy.

The actual movie isn't perfect (it takes about half an hour to really find its pace) but it is, in my opinion, a very enjoyable and often humorous fairytale (suitable for adults and children) with the sort of stylistic flourishes that one expects from Neil Gaiman.

Unstructured Syllogism

First Premise: Everything is better with Kung-fu
Second Premise: Everything is better with zombies.

Conclusion: Someone really needs to make a Kung-fu movie with zombies.

Oscar Roundup

From the last several years, I've made it my goal to see and review all of the Best Picture nominees for a given year. I am glad to report that I was able to complete my task for this Oscar season although, I must say, that the competition was considerably more lackluster than usual, which is a shame given that there are at least two movies that should have been nominated but which weren't.

Babel

Last year, my favorite nominee was Crash, which was a complex ensemble movie with a multitude of intertwined stories all dealing with the subject of racism. Babel is another ensemble movie but, where I found Crash to be an innovating cinematic fugue, Babel failed to impress me. Babel tells four different stories in four different countries (although two of them take place in Morocco and one spans the United States and Mexico). I felt that each of the stories could have made a decent short story (with one of them potentially worthy of a short story nomination) but that the whole didn't hang together well.

A big part of the problem I have with Babel is that many of the threads are thin. The Japanese connection to the rest of the stories is especially thin to the point of being practically non-existent. If one were to excise the Japanese tale, none of the rest would have either gained or lost a thing. One might also make the same claim of the Mexican/American story. Beyond that, whereas Crash had a central theme, Babel seemed to me largely pointless. I suppose that there's some message about how our actions extend beyond the horizon of our perceptions but, honestly, it's a stretch. It doesn't help that of the four stories, two of them had rather unsatisfying endings.

The Queen

The Queen focuses on the week following the death of Princess Diana. It's an exploration of the complex relationship between the British populace and their monarchy. Diana's death was both a national tragedy as well as a personal tragedy complicated by the fact that the Windsors weren't, in any sense of the word, fond of Diana. Elizabeth's instinctual response, which is to strive for privacy and dignity, is at odds with the populace's desire for public and official displays of grief, which causes immense conflict within the royalty as well as the government of a young Tony Blaire.

It is an interesting study in politics and privacy and the acting was superb. Never the less, I felt that the movie lacked a certain critical spark. When I see a best picture nominee, I want to feel wowed. When I left The Queen, I felt like I had gotten my money's worth but not as though I had experienced a work of landmark cinema.

The Departed

Martin Scorsese's latest bid for the statuette is a bloody and convoluted film that covers his favorite subject: organized crime. The story is very nearly Shakespearean in complexity as well as in sum violence. I suspect that it will be the movie that finally gets Scorsese a best picture award in part because he's due and in part because, of the nominees, it arguably is the best movie of the bunch. Given that this is a weak year, however, I think that the praise must be measured.

As a movie goes, it certainly has the characteristic Scorsese touch and, I must admit, Leonardo DiCaprio and Scorsese make a good team. Never the less, I feel that it's a fairly standard Scorsese entry. It does not ascend to the quality of The Deer Hunter or GoodFellas (which is my favorite gangster film) and I think that it would be a bit of a shame if this were the one of his movies singled out for official distinction. Be that as it may, it is certainly the best of the bunch and does deserve to win on that basis, alone.

Letters from Iwo Jima

I try to anticipate which movies will get nominated so that I can see them well in advance. Of the two Eastwood movies, I guessed that Flags of our Fathers would be the one nominated which means that I had to see two depressing World War II movies in a single year.

Letters is the story of the battle of Iwo Jima told from the side of the Japanese defenders. I do applaud the movie for having the courage to show history from the side of the losers, especially given that the majority of American produced movies about the war treat the Japanese combatants as mere props. Be that as it may, I do think that Flags was the better movie given its insightful exploration of how we alternately create and then dispose of our heroes. Letters was poignant but I feel that other movies have covered that same ground, if not from quite the same angle. Be that as it may, I do think that it is worth seeing, especially in the context of the larger Iwo Jima epic that Eastwood has created.

Little Miss Sunshine

I am delighted that this movie got a nomination. It is a rare thing for a comedy to get nominated and, generally, when one does get recognition it's the sort of depressing black comedy that makes you want to cry more than laugh.

Little Miss Sunshine does have its dark moments but it's also a genuinely funny movie. I've actually seen it three times (dragging friends in my wake) and each time I saw it the entire theater was in stitches through the best parts. The interesting thing about the movie is that it's using the same basic formula as National Lampoon's Vacation – dysfunctional family takes a road trip to a coveted destination and has trying and humorous experiences along the way – but it manages to utterly transcend the formula by making the characters feel like fleshed out beings with genuine inner lives.

Be that as it may, as much as I liked it, I don't think that it quite manages to deserve the award. Mind you, it's a close call and I really won't be upset if it does win, nor can I articulate what more I would want out of it. Perhaps, like the Academy, I do have a subconscious bias against the inclusion of comedies.

Honorable Mention: Pan's Labyrinth

It has long struck me that the Best Foreign Language Film category is something of a ghetto (much like the more recent Best Animated Film category) that often prevents deserving films from getting a Best Picture nomination. I think that Pan's Labyrinth is a perfect example of this phenomenon, which is further exacerbated by the fact that Letter's from Iwo Jima is, for all purposes, also a foreign language film.

The movie is an exquisite tale set during the Spanish civil war that deftly interweaves the mundane and the fantastic in the style of Magical Realism. The end result reminds me of some of Neil Gaiman's better work. It's the sort of mature fantasy work that's so very rare and yet so wonderful when it's done well. I would encourage everyone to take the time to see it.

Extraordinary Mention: Children of Men

The deep snubbing that Children of Men received is proof that the world lacks justice. I have heard rumors that the reason it didn't get recognition, beyond a handful of minor awards, is that the studio that produced it simply didn't know that they have a masterpiece on their hands and, thus, didn't do the sort of critical direct marketing that's necessary to get inclusions for the major categories.

That said, the film is magnificent. Most great movies have one, or maybe two, potent scenes that stick with the viewer long after he's left the theater. Children of Men, which is a dystopian tale about a world falling apart at the seams and the persistence of hope in spite of despair, is filled with such scenes. Week's after having seen it, I still find myself thinking about it. It is, in my opinion, the best movie of the year and, perhaps, of the entire decade. Its omission is heartbreaking. I hope that it will eventually develop a cult following and that it will eventually come to be seen as a science fiction and sociological classic.

Oscar Evaluation: Good Night, and Good Luck

Awhile back, Ann Coulter, the unofficial fluffer for the neo-conservative movement, started arguing that history had mistreated poor Joseph McCarthy who, she claims, was actually a true patriot doing his level best to fight an actual menace.

While I don’t think that anyone would deny that Communism was a genuine threat to the free world, and I don’t think that many would deny that there was a legitimate concern with regards to Communist agents trying to infiltrate the government, it astonishes me that anyone would insist that McCarthy’s tactics were anything less than a politically motivated witch hunt of the first order.

Good Night, and Good Luck is not the first movie to address the McCarthy era, nor is it the best (I would suggest that The Crucible deserves that honor, in spite of its careful obliqueness), but the simple fact that there are those who would try to portray McCarthyism as a good thing does indicate that it is a necessary movie. Beyond that, there are strong resonances between the days of the HUAC and our own times when people are -- to my utter horror and astonishment -- insisting that there are merits to domestic spying, detention without trial and, even, torture as a legitimate tool of interrogation; facts which I am certain influenced the production of Good Night, and Good Luck.

The film details the very public battle between legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow and McCarthy. In a stroke of absolute genius, McCarthy isn’t played by an actor. Instead, they use actual footage of McCarthy, including his infamous on-air rebuttal to Murrow. An interesting film anecdote is that studio executives who saw an early screening were concerned that the guy playing McCarthy was a bit too over the top.

Murrow is played by David Strathairn. It is said that a great actor can so perfectly assume a character that you don’t question the reality of the character. If this is a valid standard, then Strathairn is, indeed, one of the best actors I’ve had the joy of witnessing. He doesn’t look anything like Murrow but he so perfectly captures the mannerisms -- vocal and characteristic -- of Murrow that it didn’t even occur to me that he looked like anyone else but Murrow. To put this into context, it is as if a 5 foot 10 actor managed to not only play Abraham Lincoln, but also managed to convince the audience that he was actually 6 foot 6.

It is a stark movie. The sets are stark. The acting is stark. The dialog is stark. It is shot in a stark version of black and white that makes a typical Noir film seem downright cheerful by comparison. It is the starkness of the film, in fact, that ultimate ends up detracting from it. The film strives for an austere rationalism which it does achieve, but at the expense of emotional involvement. A friend of mine says that it’s almost as if the film has intimacy issues. While I can appreciate the fact that the film is making a strong case for reason in public debate, and showing the power of reason when it comes to dealing with tyrants, the fact remains that the film doesn’t engage the audience as much as it should.

I do believe that it is an Oscar Worthy pick. Indeed, I liked it better than Capote, which is a film that can’t be faulted for a lack of emotion. Never the less, I do wish that the direction was just a bit more emotive and a bit less stark. Creatures like McCarthy should, I think, evoke some emotion. One can rationally condemn monsters while, at the same time, being disgusted as mad as hell at them, too.

Oscar Evaluation: Capote

The first we see of Truman Capote is him at a party of some sort. He's sharing an anecdote with several people who are laughing and, more importantly, focused on him. We quickly learn that this is precisely where Capote wants to be: at the center of everyone's attention.

As the film begins, Truman is already an established member of New York's literary cognoscenti. He's published a number of successful novels including Breakfast and Tiffany's which has already been made into a movie, meaning that he's not only well connected in the writing establishment but he also has in-roads into the world of Hollywood which, in that era, was a still considered a thing of glamour. His best friend is Harper Lee who would eventually become famous in her own right for "To Kill a Mockingbird" (someone asks her about "that bird book" she's working on and asks if it's a children's story).

Our first impression of him is of a small, wispish man with a manner of speech that is so odd that it seems like it must be affected (although, later, he does claim that people used to make fun of the way he talks). He is gay in an era well before even the idea of gay liberation was on the horizon, but he travels through circles where no one gives a damned about that. Indeed, he lives in a rather rarefied world. In some ways, he reminds me of a rare tropical plant. Not a beautiful Polynesian flower, but something that would seem uninteresting and even ugly if it simply weren't so far out of the ordinary.

A pivotal moment comes when he reads about a multiple murder in a small Kansas town. He quickly informs his publisher of his plans and drags his friend Harper out to the middle of nowhere so that she can help him interact with the natives. (Ultimately, Harper will get a credit in the resulting book – as his secretary). His initial plan is to write a story on the impact of the violence. He really doesn't care whether or not the people who did it are caught; a fact that he shares with the sheriff of the town while asking him when he can arrange a personal interview with him. The sheriff acidly informs Truman that, even though Truman doesn't care, he cares quite a bit whether they get caught. Truman is forced to accept mere attendance at a press conference.

Eventually Harper manages to smooth some ruffled feathers and get Truman access to the Sheriff via the Sheriffs wife, who's a fan of Truman's and, more importantly, dazzled by his fame. Once again, Truman finds himself at the focus of someone's attention and he's able to use that focus to his advantage to charm the sheriff's wife and even to put the sheriff, himself, at enough ease that he let's Truman see the crime photos. Up to this point, the audience could be forgiven for wondering whether there was anything that actually made Capote special but, in this scene, we see that behind the affectations and preening, there is a genuinely brilliant mind. He wonders why the killer took the time to wrap a blanket around on the victims, and to put a pillow under the head of the other. Even the sheriff seems impressed by these insights.

Ultimately, two men are caught. One seems to be something or an artist while the other is more eloquent. Truman sits through the initial trial and manages to get some slight contact with the more eloquent of the duo via his association with the Sheriff's wife. He becomes intrigued by them. They are quickly found guilty, not least because their public defender doesn't do a very competent job of defending them. Capote quickly arranges to get them a better lawyer who launches an appeal based upon the incompetence of their original defense.

It's important to take a moment to understand why he does this. If this were an ordinary movie, it would be because the protagonist is offended at the lack of good due process. It would have been very easy to make this a movie about civil rights and the ethics of capital punishment. Truman, however, isn't really interested in such things. In these men he sees a story and he needs the time to properly research and write it. He simply doesn't want them to get killed too quickly.

The remainder of the movie Truman develops a closer relationship with the killers (there really isn't any question that they committed the crime), but it is a complex relationship. His closest contact is with Perry Smith, the more eloquent of the two. It's a relationship ship built on hesitant trusts and mutual manipulation. Perry is a smart but largely amoral person who, never the less, as intriguing depths. Indeed, the very same can be said of Capote.

His initial idea was simply a magazine article but he sees, in these two, the potential for an entirely new form of writing: the non-fiction novel. Indeed, when he gives an initial reading (once again displaying actual genius), he is met to thunderous applause (to his immense delight). The assignment, however, becomes complicated. In spite of himself, he begins to experience genuine feelings of sympathy and even empathy towards Perry. Harper tells him that he's falling in love (which isn't fair given that he already has a lover).

These feelings make Truman very uncomfortable, not because of who they are directed towards but because he's having them at all. Actual love is something alien to him. It's also frightening because love demands a shift in focus away from ourselves and towards the ones we love. Truman's position in his own private spot-light is jeopardized by these feelings, which terrifies him and compels him to do some rather despicable things.

Good biographies, of course, won't try to whitewash their subjects, but it’s typical, and not surprising, that they do tend to celebrate them. Capote is a rather unusual biopic. It's less of a celebration than a study. In is, I believe, the story of a flawed, emotionally stunted man who is forced, against his will, to experience moral growth. In a typical movie, such characters eventually achieve a breakthrough that lets to achieve maturity. Truman Capote does not. In fact, the effort and strain breaks him. In the end he is left saddened, confused, and worse off than before precisely because he only ever manages to grow half of a soul – enough to feel guilt and shame, but not enough to achieve epiphany.

Of the five nominees, Capote is my least favorite. It is important that I qualify that, however, by pointing out that this year's nominees represent a season of giants. It is a brilliant, challenging and remarkable film and well worth seeing. Part of the reason I liked it less than the others is that it has those precise qualities. It it is more difficult to love a movie where the main character is so utterly unlikable, so thoroughly pitiable, and so perfectly frustrating. The effort, never the less, is worth it.

Oscar Evaluation: 2006

I have not forgotten that I have to complete my last essay, nor have I decided to ignore that duty. Time and circumstance have, however, considered to make it difficult for me to get down to the task... that and a morbid sense of procrastination coupled with guilt that makes it difficult to start up again.

I think I need a diversion. Fortunately, Oscar season offers me the perfect distraction, and I can even legitimize it by noting that I did capsule reviews of the best picture nominees last year and that I'd like to make it an annual tradition.

That said, this is a very remarkable year. Last year I complained about the presence of undeserving fluff (read: Neverland) whose presence was all the worse because legitimately deserving pictures such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind didn't get nominated. I have no such complaint this year. All of the nominees are deep and serious films. I am, in fact, surprised that there are absolutely no blockbuster nominees -- a situation that I have simply not seen since I've been tracking the nominees. The closet we have to a popular film, this year, is Brokeback Mountain which is a film that most people are aware of but which relatively few people have seen. There are certainly no feel-good movies, and nothing that strikes me as being either lightweight or pretentious.

I am, in fact, so impressed with the nominations that I'm going to be giving each their own individual post over the next several days. Expect the first review by no later than this Friday.

Scout's honor.

Of Penguins and Parrots

I’m a documentary junkie. When I was a teen, I’d sometimes get up late at night so that I could catch HBO documentaries that might parents thought might be inappropriate for my age (when I wasn’t doing so to catch the occasional R-rated movie in the hopes of glimpsing a boob or two, but that's another story).

I have an especial fondness for nature documentaries which goes all the way back to watching Marlin Perkins and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom. Looking back, of course, it’s hard not to seen an essential corniness to that show which seemed to have the goal of moving every single animal in Africa to some other place on the continent using rocket propelled nets and tranquilizer guns as primary props.

Be that as it may, there’s something about wild animals that has an irresistible appeal. For a kid like me, born and raised in the suburbs of the Bay Area, there’s a fascinating sense of otherness that shows about animals convey. Along with Marlin and his poor side-kick Jim (who was always given the task of actually capturing dragging the poor beasts from place to place) I would go out of my way to catch National Geographic episodes. I remember pitching a nasty fit, once, because my dad had the audacity to preempt one of their specials with a football game that went into overtime. The nerve!

Of course, now that we have Animal Planet on as a 24-hour basic cable television show, as well as an honest to grog National Geographic channel, I’ve found that my interest in animal shows has waned. What has become common is no longer special. Fortunately, there’s still something about seeing that sort of thing on the big screen that allows me to slip past my own sense of jadedness. Something about the bigger-than-life magnitude of a movie screen can still transport and delight me. Alas, quality animal documentary movies are hard to find, even when one has a good independent theater to rely upon.

This summer has given me a double treat. I’ve had the chance to see not one but two animal documentaries, both about birds as it happens, albeit rather different sorts of birds. March of the Penguins is about the life-cycle of Emperor Penguins struggling to live in the very harsh environment of the Antarctic. The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, by contrast, is about a flock of wild parrots living well outside of their native environment, having established themselves in San Francisco.

Penguins is a National Geographic film and it shows. If you’ve seen any National Geographic films it’s fair to say that, to a first approximation, you’ve seen all of them. You know, walking in, that you will see examples of birth, of life, and of death. You will recognize the careful style of editing. You will know that there will be a deep and somber voiced narrator (in this case Morgan Freeman). You will anticipate that there will be some truly exquisite cinematography. The pictures and the sounds will be crisp and have an indefinable glossiness to them, as though they could be taken directly from the screen and placed on the cover of a National Geographic magazine.

Penguins has all of those features. Never the less, it is an undeniably captivating format in spite of the fact that it closely adheres to a formula. Indeed, one of the reasons that National Geographic specials stand out in our minds is that the formula is such a successful one at capturing our attention. One of the things that make it work is that the focus is squarely on the animals. We hear the narrator but his sole role is to bring us closer to the animals. There is a very definite sense of being there.

Penguins are hard birds to empathize with. Their faces not only lack expression but, in fact, look more like a sort of abstract sculpture: a small round lump tapering to a long, cruelly hooked point. You can barely see their eyes. All the sorts of cues that human brains focus as points of projection are lacking. Making it worse, full-grown emperor penguins are far from being like their smaller, cuter counterparts. They simply don’t look friendly or playful and, for the most part, they aren’t: they are big, loud, ungainly creatures.

It says something about the talent of the editors that we do empathize with them in spite of these. When the penguins are doing the seventy mile trek to their breeding grounds, we are amused at they sometimes flop down on their bellies and push themselves along like tubby sleds (the producers also give us a couple of pratfalls to chuckle over). When an inexperienced penguin couple accidentally breaks their egg, we feel sorry for them. The sight of the penguin fathers bravely enduring a storm while trying to protects their eggs gives us a profound sense of sympathy. The sight of a penguin mother, driven to a kind of madness by the loss of her chick, trying to take another chick, and the other penguin mothers holding her back, is actually heart rending. Then there are the chicks themselves.

While adult Emperors may not be cute and cuddly, their chicks certainly are. They’re chubby, little bundles of grey fuzz. There’s not a child on the planet that wouldn’t want one of these things. Of course, National Geographic plays that up in a number of ways. We feel good when we see them playing, we feel warm when we see them interacting with their parents (no siblings here -- penguin chicks are born one to a couple), and we feel awful when we see a big seagull trying to make one of them its dinner.

If you are getting the idea that the film is emotionally manipulative, it is. It’s a shameless manipulation that, never the less, perfectly managed to bypass my natural sense of cynicism towards such tactics. While I was aware that the editing and the narration were deliberately dragging me on an emotional ride the fact remains that there are some absolutely remarkable animals and that their story is genuinely compelling.

Penguins live in a harsh world. The amount of investment they need to put into a single chick is staggering (Focus on the Family might want to consider making them their symbol of committed parenting). First they need to make a long journey to their breeding ground during the winter (necessitated by the fact that during the summer the ocean will come to the breeding place… if they didn’t make the march, the chicks would drown). During this time, they can not forage or hunt for food since there is none. After the mother’s lay their eggs, they need to go back to the ocean and hunt for fish. In the meanwhile, the fathers have to stand vigil over the eggs, using their own feet as nests (since there’s no other material to be found). The father’s go a full 180 days without food of any kind. Eventually the mothers come back (assuming they haven’t been killed by seals) and the fathers take their turn.

There are so many ways for an egg to be lost, or for a chick to be killed, that it’s remarkable that any manage to survive at all. The degree of sacrifice that parental penguins make is, of course, a product of natural selection -- nothing less than such an investment would get their genes into the next generation -- but it’s still awe inspiring and incredible to watch.

If Penguins is a representation of the pinnacle of spit and polish for animal documentaries, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill is its conceptual opposite.

National Geographic documentaries always make their animals the sole focus for the audience. Parrots not only spends much of its time on the person of Mark Bittner, who observes and interacts with the birds, but even has the narrator step out in front of the camera! In documentary land, this is almost always an immense faux pas. One reason that a lot of people reject the idea that Roger Moore is a documentarian (as opposed to a propagandist) is precisely because he makes himself such a big part of his own film.

Where Penguins has polish, Parrots is fairly amateurish. The film is often grainy and frequently washed out or dim, the sound is considerably less than excellent, and the editing doesn’t provide us with a clean narrative story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Honestly, I enjoyed Parrots far more than I did Penguins for the precise reason that it was such an unaffected production.

The movie starts with an opening sequence in which we meet Mark and the Parrots. Please notice that I didn’t say Mark and his parrots. He’s out in public feeding the birds which draws the attention of a number of passers-by and tourists. One guy (who you can’t help but to instantly dislike) insists that the birds must be his pets. Mark assures him that the birds are genuinely wild. The guy asks if he’s given the birds names. Mark admits that he has. “Well, you feed them and you have names for them. That makes them your pets.”

Understanding why that’s wrong is one of the almost inadvertent themes of the film and one of the things that make it most captivating. Curiously that same guy provides the solution when he sarcastically says that Mark is the St. Francis of Telegraph Hill.

Wild Parrot flocks are surprisingly common. Almost every major city has them. What’s remarkable is how hardy the birds are. Parrots are tropical birds. One would suppose that they would perish, if not cared for, when taken out of their warm environment but wild parrot flocks have been found to flourish even in Chicago. More over, the birds have proven adaptive in other ways. The ones in San Francisco, for instance, have devised strategies -- and there’s no exaggeration to that term -- for dealing with hawk attacks. Among other things, the birds set up a sentinel to keep watch for hawks while the other birds rest. When they do spot a hawk, they have a number of ways of avoiding attack. The most remarkable is that sometimes they will fly behind the hawk, keeping themselves out of its attack radius.

Much of the film is about Mark Bittner. Mark isn’t an ornithologist (real ornithologists aren’t very interested in the birds since, technically, they are an invading species -- some conservationists, indeed, advocate their capture and destruction for that very reason). In point of fact, he looks a lot like a hippy. This impression is amplified when we learn that he doesn’t have a job. He lives rent free and survives on the charity of his friends. Given this first impression, one might expect that his relationship with the birds is a shallow one.

It’s a mistaken impression. It quickly becomes clear that Bittner has not only a keen intelligence but that that he also has the sort of eye for observation that makes for a good naturalist. The reason that the birds have names isn’t because he is declaring himself their owner; they’re named because he sees them as individuals. Make no mistake, Mark loves the birds, but also observes them with an objective eye. I found myself reminded of Jane Goodall and her relationship with the Kenyan chimps she observed.

Lest I go too far, Mark, unlike a real naturalist, does cross the line from observer to participant. When one of the birds becomes sick or injured, he’ll take it inside and tend to it; however, he never tries to keep the wild birds (he does own some domesticated parrots). One curious exception is Mingus. Mingus was a wild parrot that decided that it didn’t want to leave Mark’s care once he was healed. There’s an absolutely amazing segment where Mark punishes Mingus for acting aggressively by taking him outside and forcing him to stay out of the house for five minutes. Mingus clearly finds this to be a distressing experience.

The film often rambles. It lacks the clear narrative that we tend to expect in documentaries. In one scene, Mark is talking about a lonely blue-crested parrot named Connor. The rest of the parrots are red crested. When one of the red crested parrots loses her mate, Mark muses that it would be wonderful if Conner got together with her and had some purple-headed babies. In another documentary this would be a cue that by the end of the film there would, in fact, be a nest full of purple-headed chicks. I am sorry to report that Conner’s story has a rather different ending.

What makes the film succeed is that we do come to understand and appreciate these anomalous parrots. We also come to understand how they could have such a profound effect on Mark. In one segment he talks about the death of one of the birds under his care. It's a poignant story but it's told matter-of-factly with a profound lack of histrionics. It pulls at our hearts precisely because it isn't an emotionally manipulative telling.

Mark understands that his birds aren't people while at the same time insisting that they are individuals and that they have personalities and life histories which merit our respect and due consideration. In the end, Mark is forced to move out of his home and away from the parrots that he so dearly loves. There is a segment where he's addressing the San Francisco city council. One might expect that he would have begged for them to take care of his birds. He doesn't. He assures the council members that they can take care of themselves and all he asks is that they be left alone to do so. This, finally, is what proves him right when he insists that there birds aren't his pets: although the birds have come to consider him someone that they can rely on for food and help, they are not dependent on him. They are, in fact, independent and free.

Both films are, I think, worthy in their own way. Penguins is, by far, the more polished of the two products as well as being the more educational. It is a genuinely good movie that leads one to an appreciation for some magnificent animals living in an exceedingly inimical environment. Parrots, by contrast, is less polished and less focused on being education (although it does educate!). What it lacks in polish, though, it more than makes up in heart and soul. If I had to recommend one above the other, I would encourage you to see Parrots when and if it comes to your town; however, I can, in good conscience, suggest that you give yourself the pleasure of seeing both movies. Each has a different focus and each comes with different strengths. Both movies are worth seeing.

Review: Constantine

Since I welched on last weeks Tuesday Fun, I thought that I’d make up for the lapse with a review on the movie Constantine.

Constantine is based, more or less, on the Hellblazer series of comics. Hellblazer is part of DC Comics Vertigo line which is what they use to publish their adult-themed comics. I was actually a fairly big fan of the Hellblazer series back in the days when I had the time and money to indulge a comic book hobby (I shudder to think of all the money I spent collecting rare editions).

In the comics, John Constantine is a sort of modern-day mage with a heavy involvement in the war between Heaven and Hell. Although he is a damned soul, due to his indulgence in various dark rites, he’s very much on the side of the human race in assisting it against malevolent forces. The movie version of Constantine more or less retains this conception of him with relative faith. I would make a minor quibble of the fact that the movie Constantine is described as more of a psychic than a mage but this is decidedly a case of to-MAY-to vs. to-MAH-to. In the movie he’s a damned soul because he successfully (albeit temporarily) committed suicide at the age of 13, thus tainting his soul with a mortal sin. This is also the source of his knowledge of the denizens of hell since his two minute terminal event was a subjective lifetime given the divergence between time in the mortal realm and in the spiritual realms.

The movie opens with a blurb regarding the Spear of Destiny (that being the spear that was used to pierce the side of Christ). We are told that whoever controls the spear has power over the world and that the spear has been lost since World War II. One would suppose that we would learn how it was lost, what was significant about World War II (Nazi occultists?) and some explanation of what the previous owners of the spear did with all of their presumable power. Alas, nothing more is forthcoming on that point. I suspect that we are seeing, in this blurb, the last elements of a previous version of the script that somehow escaped redaction. Be that as it may, the movie opens with two Hispanic men finding the spear underneath a decrepit building (does this happen in Mexico, in the United States, or elsewhere — the movie doesn’t say).

The mood of the opening scene is very reminiscent of the Smeagol and Deagol scenes, from The Return of the King, so much so that I half expected the man who found the Ring, er Spear, to start babbling about his preciousss. Fortunately, the movie quickly moves to a rather good exorcism scene involving a possessed girl, a pissed off demon, and a rather large mirror. Our hero performs the exorcism at the request of a priest who admits to being well over his own head in attempting to give this demon its deportation papers. The scene plays out very well — no joke. If the whole movie maintained this feel and tempo it might well have deserved to become a sort of kitsch classic. Alas.

Finally, we meet our female protagonist, Angela Dodson, a cop, whose twin sister has apparently committed suicide. Angela and her sister are both Catholic and believe that suicide is a damnable sin so Angela refuses to believe that Isabel would have done such a thing, in spite of the fact that she was living in a mental institution. After various false starts she hooks up with Constantine and, together, they start to unravel a demonic conspiracy with potentially (and literally) apocalyptic consequences.

There is a lot I like about this movie, actually. One of my favorite plots in the comics involved Constantine’s imminent death from lung cancer due to a lifetime of smoking and the very clever way that he got out of it by selling his soul not to one but three devils. The essentially elements of that plot were carried over to the movie (although the resolution is different) which I thought showed an actual awareness of the source material, which is more than one can say of all too many comic adaptations I rather liked the portrayal of hell as being a dystopian version of Earth, complete with rusted out cars and some very disturbing demonic hounds. I like the fact that they, at least, tried to portray Heaven although, as with most efforts, Hell is more compellingly interesting. Peter Stormare’s Lucifer was over-the-top, but in a good way, and Tilda Swinton brought an intriguingly androgynous ethereality to the half-angel character of Gabriel. I loved the supernatural nightclub run by Djimon Hounson’s character of Midnite and it’s psychic entry test (you have to guess what’s on the opposite side of a tarot-like card). There were also a lot of genuinely good effects scenes.

There are two things that bring the movie down, unfortunately: plot and acting. I know it’s fashionable to bash Keanu Reaves. Honestly, I think that there are roles that are well suited for him. His portrayal of Neo in The Matrix did a good job of offering us a man whose reality had been swept out from under his feet (at least until he went into Savior mode). Unfortunately, Constantine was not the right role for him. The Constantine of the comics is, above all else, an intelligent character who survives on his wits. Reaves can’t pull that off and the effort of watching him try was painful. Rachel Weisz was very nearly as bad. Her character was supposed to be strong and tough but came off as emotionally flat and mildly pissy. Since these two characters are the leads, we are stuck with watching them try to act their way out of a paper bag for far too many minutes of the movie. The script writers also made the inexplicable decision to give Constantine an annoying teen sidekick named Chas Chandler whose … and believe me, I kid you not… main function is to drive Constantine around in a cab.

As for the plot, it never quite gels and it never quite knows what it wants to d with its (undoubtedly enormous) budget. At its best, it evokes a sense of otherworldliness hiding in the corners of the mundane world but, at its worst, it becomes an incoherent video game. A case in point of both the former and the latter: one of John’s associates is a kind of supernatural arms dealer named Scavenger. He’s a very cool character. When we see him offering his wares to John, which including shavings of the bullet that was used in the assassination attempt on the Pope, water from the river Jordan, and a little box full of some demonically repellant bugs, I was intrigued and amused. Unfortunately, one of John’s acquisitions is a kind of crucifix-shaped shotgun that must have come out of the same armory that produced the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch. Much later on when Constantine is blowing away a small army of half-demons with it, I felt like I was watching a very high-tech version of Quake II. This is not at all what the Hellblazer series was about and it’s a disservice to the character of Constantine.

As the closing credits rolled, I felt that I had sat through something that had a lot of potential and, most painfully, which had occasionally risen up to that potential but which had, ultimately, meandered and degenerated into something that was little more than an exercise in creepy eye-candy. Ah well.

1.46 out of 3.14 Nudnicks.

Oscar Evaluation: 2005

For the last couple of years I’ve been making a special effort to see all of the movies that have been nominated for a best picture Oscar. Yes, the Oscars are as much about politics as about art and have often had a deplorable record when it has come to actually identifying the picture with the most artistic merit in a given year. Never the less, I’ve found that, more often than not, the best picture nominees have, at least, been worth seeing. I will also freely admit that I get caught up in the hype and pageantry of the Oscars. Beyond that, I’m the sort of person who can’t resist offering my two cents (and if you haven’t noticed that, you clearly haven’t been reading this blog). So, with that, here is my impression of this year’s current nominees, arranged in alphabetical order as a salute to the fundamental arbitrariness of the awards.

The Aviator

Everyone and his duck knows that this is the odds on favorite. Really, it’s hard to object to the idea of giving the award to this one given how many of Scorcese’s legitimate masterpieces have been overlooked (I’m still bitter that at the thorough and undesered snubbing that the academy gave to Goodfellas, which I consider to be the best film of the 80’s).

The sad fact, though, is that this is a mediocre Scorsese film. Mind you, mediocre Scorsese is better than most directors could ever hope to aspire to (as a point of calibration, mediocre Scorsese is equivalent to very good Spielberg). The movie has a hell of a lot of worth and if this were a weaker year, I could easily see it meriting what it’s probably going to get. I will also say that this is the film that has finally convinced me that Leonardo DiCaprio has genuine talent. I don’t think that DiCaprio has quite finished maturing as an actor, but it’s clear that great things are still ahead of him… even if he personally annoys me.

Finding Neverland

Okay, here’s the pitch: we’ve got a charming Victorian eccentric who won’t conform to societies norms, a wife who simply doesn't understand him, a struggling widow and mother to three lovely boys, one of whom has lost his ability to “believe”, and her uptight mother-in-law who doesn’t think that it’s appropriate that they associate with our eccentric protagonist… oh, did we mention that he’s the man who created Peter Pan? Why, the script practically writes itself. Unfortunately, it is all to apparent that that is precisely what happened. It’s a by-the-numbers heartwarming drama that resembles nothing so much as a Lifetime special with a Hollywood budget.

About the kindest thing that I can say about this movie is that it had some really wonderful actors (forced to play some amazingly one dimensional characters) and lavish production value (squandered on an entirely predictable and simplistic story). Given that this was the same year that produced Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Hotel Rwanda, its actually painful to consider that this entirely pointless exercise in schmaltz took a slot that should have gone to one of them.

Million Dollar Baby

Like most people, I still think of Clint Eastwood as being Dirty Harry and/or the High Plains Drifter. As such, seeing him in the role of director is about as astonishing as it would be if that damned orangutan from Any Which Way but Loose were to direct. Really, though, this isn’t a fair perspective. Not only has Eastwood made three films worthy of Oscar contention (including this one), to say nothing of winning an Oscar for Unforgiven, but he’s directed over thirty films. He’s more than paid his dues as a director and it is unfair to think of him as being some sort of sideshow curiosity.

As for Million Dollar Baby, it is simply one of the best films I’ve ever seen, period. When I dragged my girlfriend along with me to see it, she was, like myself, expecting a kind of female version of Rocky. When the movie ended, her hand on my arm was faintly trembling and she found herself speechless. Although the milieu of the movie is the world of boxing, it would be as wrong to say this it was a boxing movie as would be to say that Watership Down was an just a book about a bunch of bunny rabbits. It would, however, be entirely accurate to say that it is the movie that should, in a just universe, win this year.

Ray

How often do we see a biographical movie being promoted with the line “X is Y”, e.g., Nick Nolte is His Holiness Pope Pius III! It has become a Hollywood cliché. Never the less, in this movie, Jamie Foxx so thoroughly assumes the character of Ray Charles that I had to wonder if the real Ray Charles found himself displaced into a state of quantum limbo while Foxx was doing his job.

It is clear that Ray is a work of love. For a film like this, that can be a disadvantage. A good biographic can be sabotaged by too much love for the character. Ray, however, manages to celebrate the life of Ray Charles without descending to a fawning admiration. Charles is portrayed as a complex person with faults as well as virtues. Like a good biography should, it leaves us with the impression that we understand the man more than we did and that there’s something there that is worth understanding.

Ray isn’t epic, like The Aviator, nor does it dazzle us with special effects, like Finding Neverland, but it does make us care about the man and makes us feel that we have come to know him. If that's not enough, it also has some marvellous music, too.

Sideways

Sidewise wants to be an intelligent comedy. I love intelligent comedies. Unfortunately, I didn’t think that it was either. To understand my disappointment, you should understand that, although I’m not a wine snob, per se, I am certainly a dilettante. I swirl my glass, I’ve been known to use the word “nose” to describe the scent of the liquid, and I have been in the company of otherwise sane adults who have, in all earnestness, proclaimed that a given wine had hints of blackberry, tobacco and mahogany. Yes, mahogany. In other words, I’ve been close enough to the world of dedicated wine snobbery to be able to fully appreciate how sublimely ridiculous it really is. Given this, I should have been the perfect audience for Sideways.

I hated it.

You may have noticed that film critics loved this movie. There’s a scene where one of the protagonists is explaining to a potential romantic interest why he’s so into pinot noir. He goes into this little monologue about how the grapes are delicate and difficult to nurture but that if you give them the appropriate attention, the reward more than makes up for the effort. It’s obvious that what he’s really describing is himself. Film critics eat that kind of crap up with a spoon. It’s the sort of narrative trick that makes you feel smart for spotting it. Unfortunately, a movie needs more than clever rhetorical devices to have worth. At the end of the movie I was left with two characters I couldn’t have cared less about, a set of circumstances that seemed perfectly banal, and a comedy which provoked me to laughter twice. Again, in a year where two excellent movies were snubbed, I can’t see the justification of including this other than the fact that it’s the kind of movie that appeals to erstwhile film students (i.e. critics).

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Okay, this wasn't a nominee (nor am I putting it in alphabetic order) but, dammit, it should have been. If, like most people, you haven't seen this movie, go out and rent it. Never mind that it's a Jim Carrey movie and that, nine times out of ten, he's an annoying goofball. Never mind that you aren't going to be able to find someone who can summarize the plot into a short, declarative sentence. The movie is worth it. It is, easily, one of the most original and brilliant films that I've ever had the fortune to see. It it surreal but it is also about things that are basic and fundamental to our humanity. I won't do the film an injustice by trying to explain it or even to summarize it. All I can do is implore you to go and give it a fair chance.

Hotel Rwanda

About the only bad thing I can say about Hotel Rwanda is that too many people are going to see it, feel bad, and then, later on, pat themselves on the back while they feel good about having felt bad. Be that as it may, and as sad as it is to say this, for most people this will be the only time they will have so much as heard about the genocide that happened in Rwanda.

Like many films about difficult subjects (e.g., Schindler's List which is the film that Hotel Rwanda is most prone to being compared with) it deals with a difficult and heartbreaking subject by placing the focus on a person who attained virtue in the midsts of incredible evil. Okay, let's come out and admit that it's derivative. In spite of that, it does a good job of illuminating a very dark, and very real, episode in our recent past. So long as man continues to be inhumane to mankind, it is important that we remind ourselves of the times when we lapse into atrocity. While it could have been better (because of its low budget, the movie has a hard time convincing us of the actual scale of the genocide), I think that it's more than good enough to accomplish this necessary task.

Go see this movie, please.

So, to sum it all up, here's my ordering from best to worst (including the movies I think should have been nominated):

1. Million Dollar Baby
2. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
3. Ray
4. The Aviator
5. Hotel Rwanda
6. Finding Neverland
7. Sideways
   

Have fun on Oscar night.

Movie Review: Modern Times

I sometimes feel that the aficionados for a given thing are often its worst enemy in terms of popularizing it. It is impossible, for instance, to mention Star Trek to a typical person without immediately conjuring images of screaming convention geeks and Klingon weddings. I think that classic cinema suffers from this phenomenon.

In too many people's minds, classical cinema (a.k.a. old movies) is viewed as being opaque, boring and confusing because people who are particularly interested in the art of film have a tendency to point their friends at directors like Bergman, Fellini and Kurosawa. I will be the first to admit that their films are high art but, at the same time, I would be very hesitant to suggest that someone who isn't deeply into the subject should run out and rent themselves a copy of The Seventh Seal.

The unfortunate thing about this is that a lot of classic movies are not only accessible to a typical audience but are, in fact, entertaining. You don't have to be a total movie geek to love Dr. Strangelove or Casablanca. Such movies of these have popular appeal and are enjoyable even if you aren't interested in dissecting their political subtext or interested in the director's use of light and shadow to convey a message (or whatnot).

Silent movies have particularly suffered from this sort of automatic rejection by association. The simple truth of the matter is that a lot of silent movies aren't really that interesting to most people in a modern audience even if dedicated enthusiasts can get a lot out of them. There are exceptions, however. One such exception is Charlie Chaplin's 1936 movie Modern Times.

If you look around for reviews of the movie you come across such statements as

Modern Times is a social critique of the new technology that dehumanizes people, and a powerful statement against the technology and rules that inhibit progress.

Forget all that. This is a movie that you can sit down in front up, with a bag of microwave popcorn and some soda, and laugh. I want to be clear that when I say that this film is funny I am not using the term in the same way that English Literature enthusiasts will try to insist that Shakespeare's plays are brimming with hilarity (just so long as you read this carefully annotated explanation of the social context of the early reign of King James). I mean that you will laugh.

In spite of being made nearly seventy years ago, and being in black and white and being (yes) mostly silent, the movie doesn't have any difficulty speaking to modern audiences, nor does it seem particularly quaint. In addition to a lot of pratfalls and some really amazing stunt work, there's a sly bit of nipple humor and even a little bit of judicious drug humor (Charlie accidentally eats some "nose powder").

The plot of the movie is fairly basic. Charlie is working in a factory when he has a nervous breakdown. Although he gets cured, he's lost his job and has to find new work. Along the way he ends up hooking up with a beautiful young woman who's living on the streets. Together, they try to find happiness and the American Dream having various adventures along the way.

It is true that one can look beyond the basic humor of the movie for deeper messages and subtext. I found myself, for instance, noticing the pervasiveness of police in the movie. The police weren't portrayed as either brutal or bumbling (rather, as guys just doing their jobs) but their overall presence was menacing. You may also take note of Chaplin's portrayal of the plight of the unemployed.

The important thing, however, is that you don't need to do any of that. You can, if you like, simply enjoy it as a fun movie. I can promise that when you're watching him struggle with a berserk automatic feeding machine, you won't need to be taking notes on the relationship between the proletariat and the bourgeois. You will be far too busy laughing your ass off.