Movies

A few days ago, Steven Den Beste posted an analysis of the Matrix films. He approached the films from an engineer’s standpoint and attempted to provide a logical explanation (free of pseudo-philosophical meta-babble) for why the people (or AI programs) in the film acted the way they did. It’s definitely an interesting read, and has gotten lots of attention lately.

In response, a screenwriter named John August posted a short rant on why the Matrix trilogy ultimately blows. At one point, he concisely describes something I’ve been thinking about with respect to a few other movies:

Lord knows, I’m not pining for simplicity or tidy answers. I’m happy with some ambiguity. But “incomprehensible” is not a synonym for “clever.”

My friend Rawson has a good phrase for it: “Playing obscurity for depth.” It’s the tendency of a screenplay — or an actor — to make weird choices that the audience won’t understand. The audience, fearing that they just didn’t “get it,” will label the writing or performance brilliant.

This is the perfect description for how I feel about Syriana. The film is many things, but simplistic is not one of them. In fact, the primary observation most reviews offer is that it is mindnumbingly dense. It’s got an overabundance of plot, and in order to tell the story it wants to tell it assumes the audience is familiar with a large number of concepts. To say the film is convoluted and ambiguous is an understatement. Director and writer Stephen Gaghan has said of his film that there are no easy answers, that there are no good guys and no bad guys. There aren’t traditional story arcs, and the cynical connections and stories don’t resolve themselves by the end of the film. It’s told on an incredibly broad canvas and it’s difficult to approach.

Indeed, when I came out of the theater, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of absolute despair. Syriana took a lot of heat for being a “message” film. A movie where the filmmakers do nothing but preach to you for 2 hours. And to some extent, there are some messages that do get through (i.e. an indigtment of the American blah blah blah). I’m not sure if despair is what they were shooting for, but I don’t think you can avoid it while watching this movie. However, after a few days of letting the film stew in my head, I realized why the despair was unwarranted.

In the Cinecast review of Syriana, the hosts mention that Gaghan is so busy telling the story that you really have trouble keeping up. They make an observation about several pieces of dialogue, especially early in the film, in which someone will say something really provocative… and then the scene ends and you’re immediately wisked away to some other part of the world. It leaves you feeling disoriented and it’s difficult to keep up. But the feeling fades. Regardless of what Gaghan wants you to think when you see this movie or how the world really does work (and I suppose cynicysm is warranted when it comes to such issues), that sort of filmmaking ultimately leaves me suspicious. It’s “Playing obscurity for depth.”

Sometimes this works. Stories can sometimes get away with tricks like this because they force you to piece the story together by yourself (and in itself, that is entertaining and fun), but in a politically charged movie like Syriana it falls flat (on the other hand, I can’t imagine anyone making a movie like this that wouldn’t fall flat on that level). There’s a lot to like about the movie, and it does an admirable job asking uncomfortable questions and raising provocative issues. Gaghan does a good job pacing the film and weaving the various storylines together, but I think he tries to do a bit too much on too broad of a canvas (by contrast, I think Traffic, also written by Gaghan, does a much better job). While I honestly don’t believe that Gaghan gets too preachy in forcing some sort of agenda on the audience, I’m not sure I agree with where this film goes either. I can see reasons for cynicism, but I don’t think that warrants the despair I see in the film.

This post got a bit out of hand, didn’t it? Anyway, speaking of Gaghan, there’s an excellent audio inteview up at Creative Screenwriting Magazine (warning: very large audio file) in which Gaghan describes his early career and his process for researching and writing Syriana. It’s a great interview and Gaghan is very forthright about where he’s coming from and what he’s trying to do. Highly recommended if you’re interested. Definitely an interesting fellow. (On an almost completely unrelated note, an inteview of Eli Roth, writer/director of Hostel, is also available on the Creative Screenwriting podcast)

This has become something of a tradition here, so I figured I might as well continue the trend and blog the Oscars live tonight (if you’re interested, I liveblogged the Oscars in 2004 and 2005). Check back for frequent updates, and feel free to hang around and leave comments to play along…

To start things off, here are my picks for the major awards:

• Best Picture: The favorite here is Brokeback Mountain, and I have to go with that. There is an outside chance that Crash or Good Night, and Good Luck will take home the statue, but I’m doubting it.
• Best Director: I’m going with Ang Lee here, both because I think Brokeback Mountain is going to have the momentum, and also because Lee was deserving for his work on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon a few years ago… Clooney has an outside chance here because the Acadamy (comprised largely of actors) notiriously likes to reward fellow actors who make the leap to directing.
• Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, for Capote. No contest here.
• Best Actress: This is much tougher. I’m going with Reese Witherspoon because she seems to be Hollywood’s sweetheart and I think that it might be a way to reward Walk the Line as well.
• Best Supporting Actor: George Clooney for Syriana. I’m betting that Good Night, and Good Luck won’t be taking home many awards, but Clooney’s popularity will probably net him something (and I think this is the most likely place). However, if Good Night does well, this could easily fall to Paul Giamatti for Cinderella Man. He’s a likeable guy, plus the Academy may feel bad for snubbing him last year.
• Best Supporting Actress: The buzz seems to be Michelle Williams or Rachel Weisz. Not having seen either movie, I’ll just have to pick Michelle Williams, betting that she’ll be riding the Brokeback wave…
• Best Original Screenplay: I’m guessing that Crash will get the nod here. Screenplay awards often go to films that get no other awards. It’s a sympathy thing. I don’t think Crash will garner the Best Picture award, so I’m guessing it’ll get this one as a consolation.
• Best Adapted Screenplay: Brokeback Mountain, though the sympathy factor could push it to one of the other nominees.
• Editing: Crash
• Cinematography: Good Night, and Good Luck
• Visual Effects: King Kong (why no Star Wars in this category?)
• Best Animated Film: Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
• Best Documentary: March of the Penguins

Update: Commentary moved below the fold. Click below to read on…

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Oscar LivebloggingRead More »

A recent topic on Cinecast (the excellent Chicago-based podcast by Adam Kempenaar and Sam Hallgren) was movies that are so bad they’re good. Depending on how you define such a movie, this could be quite difficult, and the Cinecast folks took one of the more difficult interpretations. They wanted movies that were actually transcendantly bad and they knew that was a difficult task, so they requested each listener to send in a pick.

Once I started thinking about it, I realized that most of the movies that came to mind were movies I liked despite the fact that they were bad, not movies that I liked because they were bad (i.e. Phantasm). Again, there’s lots of room for interpretation with this type of film, but I was looking for a movie that I thought was good first, then after a moment’s thought realized how foolish it was. After some thought, I finally settled on my number 1 movie that’s so bad its good: Rocky IV. I sent my pick to the Cinecast folks along with a brief description of why I thought it qualified, and they actually read it on the air (in this show, if you’re interested)! Here was my brief description:

My suggestion for the “So Bad It’s Good” top 5 would have to be Rocky IV. Easily the most ludicrous film in the entire series – filled with horrible cliches, cardboard cutout characters, 80s montages (in fact, I think the film is primarily composed of a series of montages set to 80s music that would also qualify as “so bad they’re good”), bad monosyllabic acting, laughable geo-political undertones, and the list goes on and on. Yet it’s also probably the most entertaining of all the Rocky movies. It distills all of the superficial but enjoyable cliches of the first three movies into a film that has to be described as so bad it’s good.

Rocky IV genuinely isn’t a bad movie. If you were to objectively evaluate every individual component of the film, it would be a horrible film, but together, it is truly more than the sum of it’s parts. Naturally, there are many specific bad things that I like about the film, but I was attempting brevity. However, as I’m sure my regular readers (all 4 of you) know, brevity usually isn’t an issue on my blog, so here are some of my favorite things about Rocky IV:

• In the course of Jonathan Morris’s excellent post on the Rocky series, he references the excellent start of the film thusly: “James Brown performs ‘Living In America,’ and Drago—perhaps angered by the performance—kills Apollo in the ring.” Classic start.
• A commenter from the Rocky post above calls out another excellent moment in the film, right after Apollo’s funeral:
  

  My favorite moment is, after Apollo dies, and Rocky decides to go for a soul-searching drive (while that song “There’s No Easy Way Out” is playing), he looks in the rear-view mirror and thinks he sees Drago. Clearly the best use of the “I mistakenly thought I saw my nemesis in the reflection of a mirror/window” moment in movie history. What’s the runner-up, you ask? That honor goes to Bloodsport, when Van Damme thinks he sees Chong Li in the reflection of a Hong Kong subway window.

  I considered bloodsport for a top 5 spot (see below), but it ultimately lost out…

• Brilliant training montages cross-cut to contrast Drago’s futuristic, ultra-high-tech regimen with Rocky’s more wholistic, old-school program. Drago’s constantly hooked up to machines which measure his performance, while Rocky likes to run around in deep snow (which, I’ll grant, isn’t as easy as it looks), lifting ox-carts and the like. My favorite part, when Rocky is in such great shape that he is able to lose his Soviet handlers while running up a mountain, and when he gets to the top, he screams “DRAGO!!!” at the top of his lungs.
• After the fight with Drago, Rocky addresses the Soviet Union: “I guess what I’m trying to say is, if I can change, and you can change, everybody can change.” And thus the Cold War was won…

I could probably go on and on, but I wanted to list out my Top 5 So Bad They’re Good Movies. Some notes on criteria first. As previously mentioned, these are movies so bad they’re good, not movies I like despite the fact that they’re bad. As Cinecast put it, they’re transcendantly bad. Also worth noting is that I’m not including campy movies or movies that are intentionally bad (ruling out the likes of Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, and Big Trouble in Little China)

1. Rocky IV: For reasons I’ve already spoken too much about above.
2. Commando: One of Schwarzenegger’s best/worst films in which he plays a ex-military superman who is forced back into an action by an old colleague gone bad. The ending of the film, in which “Matrix” takes out an entire island of enemy troops is a gem.
3. Red Dawn: A Soviet/Cuban invasion of America? You bet, and a band of high school students led by Patrick Swayze mount a guerilla campaign in resistance (using the name of their football team, the Wolverines, as their name). A classic.
4. Cobra: Another Sly Stallone movie? Indeed. Similar to Commando, the ending sequence in which Stallone takes out an entire cult of axe-clanking maniacs while riding in the back of a pickup is brilliant…
5. Point Break: Keanu Reeves plays FBI Special Agent Johnny Utah, need I say more? Ok, Gary Busey, Patrick Swayze (again!) playing someone named “Bodie,” surfing, and much, much more… Worth watching just for Keanu’s delivery of the line “I am an FBI agent.”

Honorable Mention: Bloodsport, Breakin’ 2 – Electric Boogaloo (mostly for the name), Tango & Cash (Stallone, again), The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (which may be disqualified for its camp factor), and Rambo: First Blood Part II (Stallone fights communists again; he’s such a champ in this category).

Interestingly enough, the grand majority of my choices are 80s movies (and they dominated the Cinecast choices as well), which is probably appropriate as the 80s were truly so bad they’re good. There’s probably a large element of nostalgia at work with my choices here as well, as these were all movies I loved to watch when I was growing up in the 80s…

Feel free to leave your picks in the comments. It’s an interesting subject, and perhaps because of the nostalgia aspect, it seems to be strangely personal.

Update: A friend just chimed in with Varsity Blues. We’re both a little unsure if it qualifies, but if it does, I think it could easily displace one of my top 5. Excellent choice…

It’s difficult to describe the feelings the original Star Wars trilogy stirred in me as a child (though I suspect many of my generation are familiar with those feelings). When I watch them again, even today, I still get that feeling. I think at least part of it was that I didn’t fully understand the story as a child. It was a visceral story, so on a raw emotional level, I got it, even if I wasn’t able to articulate an intellectual response. As I’ve grown older, repeated watchings have only increased my appreciation.

Warning! Spoilers Ahead…

One thing I’ve felt has always been particularly effective was how the films treated the Force. The Force consists of two opposing sides, a Dark Side and a Light Side. Neither side is made up of specific “abilities” of the Force – it is the way in which these abilities are used that is important. Acting on positive emotions like love, compassion, and courage is the path of the Light Side, while fear, attachment, and hatred are the way of the Dark Side. Practitioners of the Light Side suppress their negative emotions while nurturing their positive emotions to help others. Devotees to the Dark Side use their negative emotions to fuel their selfish power and are thus able to increase their outward strength and abilities. As a result, the Dark Side of the Force is extremely seductive. Each time one calls on the power of the Dark Side, they become more attached to it. It becomes an addiction which feeds upon itself.

This process of turning to the Dark Side was handled exceptionally well in the original trilogy. The entire Star Wars story centers around two people: Darth Vader, who has turned to the Dark Side, never to look back, and Luke Skywalker, who has only begun his journey, his fate uncertain. Knowing Luke’s sensitive state, Vader attempts to seduce Luke to the Dark Side, and for a time, he is successful. Despite Obi Wan and Yoda’s teachings, Luke failed at the cave on Dagobah and when he sees that his friends are in danger, he rushes off to confront Vader, where he fails again. Luke was acting on his attachment to his friends, and his hatred for Vader. In the end, Luke was able to see the error in his ways and he eventually succeeded because of the love and trust he gave his father, redeeming him and saving them both from the Emperor.

So the original trilogy told the tale of a young Jedi who was tempted by the Dark Side, but persevered because of his devotion to the Light Side. The prequels tell the story of Anakin Skywalker, a young Jedi who was tempted and ultimately seduced by the Dark Side. Judging from the response to Episode III, it seems that the way Anakin’s turn is portrayed is the most frequently cited problem with the film. And I have to admit, there is some truth to that.

First, when Lucas introduced the concept of Midichlorians, he completely demystified the Force. Part of the reason the Dark side was so scary in the original films was that one wrong turn could inexorably lead you down the path to the Dark side. It was a vaguely mysterious process, and not knowing exactly how the Force worked only served to make it more effective. Second, the first two prequels were pretty much a waste. One of my initial thoughts upon seeing Episode III was that it made the first two prequels better. But it really shouldn’t be that way. The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones should have made Revenge of the Sith better, not the other way around.

To me, all the pieces were there, they just weren’t integrated all that well. In Episode I, we see hints of Anakin’s fear and anger, and in Episode II, we see some of that bloom into what I consider to be the beginning of Anakin’s descent to the Dark side. When his mother dies and he slaughters that camp of sand people, he began on the path to the Dark side. At that point, he hadn’t gone very far (just as Luke’s failures in Empire didn’t turn him completely), but it was a start. Yet very little is made of this in the films. In the opening of Episode III, Anakin strikes down a defenseless Count Dooku at the behest of Palpatine. I would have thought that was another big step in the wrong direction, but nothing much is made of it in the movie either. Instead, the film relies upon vague (but reasonably well done) political intrigue and the impending death of Padme as the only real motivators to turn to the Dark side. Furthermore, they’re both shown as occurring in parallel. One didn’t really build off the other, as you would expect in a turning to the Dark side process. Both are good reasons, to be sure, but when the time came and Anakin made his decision, it came off as muddled, especially given the near immediate reversal in direction that the scene implies. The fact that I described it as a “decision” should set off alarms here – turning to the Dark side isn’t a decision, it’s a process. A mystical, seductive process that doesn’t just happen the way it did in the film.

There’s a lot more too Anakin’s turn to the Dark side, and one could argue that all sorts of things shown in the prequels contributed, but Lucas doesn’t tie any of it together in an especially convincing way. I’ve always thought of turning to the Dark side as being a long process, starting with small, seemingly innocuous events, but eventually snowballing into an unstoppable downward spiral.

All of that said, I still enjoyed Revenge of the Sith, perhaps a bit more than it really deserves. In the end, it’s a Star Wars film, and as such, it pulls from a rather large reservoir of movie-going goodwill. The test of time will most likely relegate the prequels to a supporting role in the Star Wars pantheon. The original trilogy still stands as a brilliant piece of work, and while it’s a shame the prequels didn’t quite live up to that standard, it’s hard to believe that anything really could…

Note: I’ll be travelling this weekend, so no new entry on Sunday.

The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster : This has been around a while, but Darth Vader’s blog is surprisingly good. You’d expect such a venture to go for cheap laughs (a la the very secret diaries of LOTR characters), but the Canadian author, Matthew Frederick Davis Hemming, really does a good job capturing the life of Vader, including some banal observations (it seems the circuitry controlling his left leg is on the fritz), occasionally throwing out poignant references to her or his son, and even showing a bit of introspection. Of course, there’s a lot of humor too, but he avoids the real groaners. For example, many a mention of Lando Calrissian, but not a single reference to Colt 45. That’s class, right there.

The blog seems to be covering the events immediately preceding and during The Empire Strikes Back. I think it works better if you read from the beginning. One of my favorite things about the blog is the elevation of Imperial Officers (like Admiral Ozzel, Captain Piet, General Veers, and the like) from bit parts to genuine supporting roles. Here’s a nice comment about Stormtroopers’ uniforms:

I must say that the stormtroopers’ new heavy weather gear makes them look very cool. Hats off to Palpatine. (Most people don’t know this but His Excellency designs all of our outerwear personally; he has a real flair for geometry, and a great sense of line.)

And Lord Vader also replies to some of the comments (the title of this post being in response to that age-old question: “Do you prefer waffles or pancakes?”). I’m not sure, but I think it’s possible some of the commenters (boba fett?) are also being written as part of the “story.” So if you’re a fan, check out the blog. With post titles like “The Wind Beneath My Wings,” “Calgon, Take Me Away,” and “I Am Surrounded By Idiots,” it’s not to be missed. [via Slashdot] And just for fun, here’s the note Vader sent to Ozzel’s kin after Ozzel’s untimely death:

Dear House of Ozzel,

I regret to inform you that your son has been killed in the line of duty.

He was an incompetent, yammering boob and he will be missed by none. I have allowed the men to pillage his personal belongings, which is why we have enclosed nothing but the sole remaining item: a torn advertisements page from a magazine of midget pornography. May it shock and disturb you, and may you think of it always when you remember your dearly departed son, the ninny.

Know also that his limitations as a sub-par military professional caused the deaths of many of the Emperor’s loyal soldiers, whose funeral expenses will appear on your next tax assessment.

Sincerely,

D. Vader

Heh