Just an Update of Sorts

Hello all! It has been over a month since my last post and I figured I should add something here, just to let everyone know that I'm still very much alive.

Really, this semester has flown by much faster than I had anticipated. With four classes and my new job as tutor (technically Instructional Specialist II) at the Writing Center, I haven't had much time to think about anything except work, grading papers, helping students with their essays, and decompressing on the weekends.

Of courses, this does not mean I've neglected my movie watching. On the contrary, I've watched a few good films and a couple great ones. The only thing I've missed over the past month is my inability to make it to the theater. All of my movie watching has taken place primarily at home through Netflix.

Below is a short rundown of the films I've recently seen and a quick statement on what I thought about each. Nothing too extensive, just my reviews in miniature. This is not all of them, I think, but it's enough for now.

Young Frankenstein

I have no idea how I've missed this film over the years, but finally it made its way to my TV screen and in a beautiful Blu-ray version. The film itself is hysterical; however, it really is Gene Wilder's film as his facial expressions alone sent me into fits of giggles. Gene Hackman is equally as funny, and he only has one scene. Needless to say, I loved it and can't wait to buy it for my own library.

Ticked-Off Trannies with Knives

This particular film will not be everyone's ideal choice for a date night. However, it has its charms. Anyone who has seen the drag shows in S4's Rose Room here in Dallas will recognize the main characters as regular drag performers. The film is intentionally poor in some areas, due to the nature of the genre, but two performances stood out the most: Kelexis Davenport and Tom Zembrod. Davenport is my personal favorite, especially when she utters the line, "You hit like a bitch" in a stone-faced deadpan. However, Zembrod should have toned down the creep factor a bit. His performance is best when he just speaks the lines given to him; they're creepy enough on their own. His performance reminded me of Hamlet oddly enough:

"Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature." (3.2.1)

Winter's Bone

This film is an exercise in restraint and demonstrates why sometimes it's better to underact than to overact. The tension is so thick throughout the entire film that my stomach received quite the workout during the film. It's a shame the result was not a six-pack. Anyway, I'm not sure if the film had more of an effect on me than its fellow Best Picture nominees, but it definitely deserved to be recognized, as did Jennifer Lawrence. Interesting to note that most of the actors in the film had never acted before; a bit terrifying, actually, considering how scary most of them are.

Red State

I've long been a fan of Kevin Smith, beginning with Clerks, although I try to forget I ever watched Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. And seeing how most of his films are sometimes grotesque, but always sweet comedies, I was intrigued to learn of his latest film being a thriller. Truth be told, I enjoyed it. Not as much as Dogma or Chasing Amy perhaps, but it was the first time I forgot I was watching a Kevin Smith and was held there in seat by the story and a chilling performance from Michael Parks. There is no happy ending. Only a couple of poignant final lines spoken by the great John Goodman: "People just do the strangest things when they believe their entitled. But they do even stranger things when they just plain believe."

My one complaint: the siege went on for far too long. It seemed to last forever without anything really happening except people firing assault rifles at each other.

Shaun of the Dead

On a lighter note, Shaun of the Dead did exactly what it set out to do: be simultaneously scary and hysterical, with the latter dominating the former. I think my favorite scene has to be the continuous shot of Simon Pegg doing his normal walk to the convenience store and not noticing that everyone around him is a zombie because there isn't that much of a difference from what they were like before. Now that's some funny social commentary.



 

21 Grams

21 Grams could have been so much better if Inarritu had dispensed with the nonlinear storytelling and just told the story. The story's devastating enough on its own. Otherwise the performances are well worth slogging through the choppy narrative, especially Namoi Watts, who I adore. 

3:10 to Yuma (2007)

And finally, there's this film. Along with the remake of True Grit, it has reminded me of how great a western film can be. It's a shame not many people went to the theaters to see 3:10 to Yuma. Christian Bale and Russell Crowe are mesmerizing as two men trying to make it in an unforgiving society and landscape. The last scene is the best of the entire film.






So, there you go. Just a few films I'd recommend if you haven't seen them already. If you have, well, hopefully you enjoyed them as much as I did.

AFI Project Entry #2: The Graduate, Raging Bull, and One More, Just for Fun!

It has been a while since my last AFI post. The process of watching all these films takes a lot longer than I'd hoped, plus finding them is also somewhat problematic. Netflix is great in this, but I wish that all one hundred films were available for streaming. Unfortunately, this is not the case, so wait I must.

Either way, I have seen two more films on AFI's list: The Graduate and Raging Bull. Both are really good films, but for some reason I had a real problem connecting with the characters on an emotional level, which is why I'm also including a film I loved, Yojimbo. My last entry in this project was very women-centric, and so it is fitting that that this entry covers quite the opposite. All three films have a heavy masculine focus and perspective. Women do play an important role in all three films, especially The Graduate, but all three are decidedly more masculine films. It's good to be an equal opportunist, isn't it?

Once again, I do include spoilers for each of the following films. You have been warned!

The Graduate

Okay, so I'm hoping this entry won't quite as long as my last entry, which I'm sure wasn't all that much fun for most of you. However, this one might be just as long.

I'd heard a lot of good things about The Graduate, so I'd been looking forward to watching this film. It's a shame I didn't find it as engaging as others have. The film seemed to lose me in its second half, about the time when Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) falls in love with Mrs. Robinson's daughter, Elaine (Katherine Ross). This didn't make all that much sense in comparison to the rest of the film, and frankly turns Ben into.... well... for lack of a better term, a slut.

The real power behind this movie is not Benjamin, although his nervousness in the beginning and his inability to focus are endearing traits; the real story of this film is Mrs. Robinson herself (Anne Bancroft). From the very beginning of the film, Mrs. Robinson dominates every scene she's in, and the film's best moments are when she is clearly leading Ben to do what she wants. There's even a moving moment when Mrs. Robinson, drenched and wearing no makeup, asks Ben not to take Elaine out, which Ben does at his parents' insistence.

It is at this point the movie loses me. Not enough time is spent on Elaine's character, and Ben's abrupt shift in obsession is unsettling. Of course, this may have been Mike Nichols' intention all along as a commentary on adolescent rebellion. The final shot of the film is by far the most intriguing. After fleeing her own wedding with Ben, Elaine and Ben board a bus and sit in the very back. Laughter overtakes them for a a minute or two, but the laughter gradually subsides and we are left with both Ben and Elaine facing forward, unsmiling, seemingly unthinking, or perhaps thinking too much. Maybe this is the point they are beginning to consider an intriguing point (a point Roger Ebert raises in his Great Movie review of the film): What do they have in common? And really, who are these people sitting in the back of a bus? Neither question is answered by the film. The only character who shows complexity in the film is Mrs. Robinson and it is she who leaves the most lasting impression. Everyone else, including Ben, is merely a sideshow.

Raging Bull

 Martin Scorsese is one of those director's I've heard a lot about over the years, but somehow managed to miss most of his films, and the first I saw was not one of his better efforts, or at least not one I particularly enjoyed: Gangs of New York. While Gangs of New York has some beautiful shots and an intriguing storyline, it is completely overshadowed by the brilliant performance of Daniel-Day Lewis, and Leonardo DiCaprio just isn't a strong enough of an actor to hold his own against Lewis' powerful character. I wanted DiCaprio's character to fail, and that's not what the focus of the film, so in that respect, it failed. A better representation of his style was first seen a few years later when I got the chance to see The Departed.

Raging Bull is closer to The Departed in style, technique, and overall quality. However, as with The Graduate, I didn't feel an emotional connection with the characters on the screen. Yes, Robert De Niro is phenomenal as Jake LaMotta, as is Joe Pesci as his brother, but what I found most intriguing about the film is its technical brilliance.

Plenty of people have written about the ferocity of the fights, which were editing amazingly well, but what I enjoyed most was the more subtle (and not so subtle) parts of the film that lay the foundation for the brutality of the fights themselves. Take, for instance, the end of LaMotta's first fight in the film: After clearly knocking his opponent senseless, LaMotta is shot at eye level and then the camera shifts to a slight low angle shot, barely even perceptible. This is brilliant foreshadowing of not only the outcome of that fight, but how LaMotta will struggle throughout the rest of the film. A low angle shot, of course, indicates power and by shooting LaMotta from a slight low-angle Scorcese is indicating that LaMotta, while a gifted boxer, will not get the outcomes he so desires. And sure enough, the judges of that fight hand the victory to his opponent. This motif holds true throughout the entire film, all the way up to the film shot, where LaMotta is rehearsing how he plans to repair his relationship with his brother. The film ends without any type of closure: We do not know what happens once LaMotta leaves the frame, and we're not meant to know; LaMotta is meant to linger on in our consciousness, ever struggling, ever fighting.

Also, pay attention to the dialogue. It's repetitive and confrontational at every turn, rarely is it calm and understanding. The dialogue itself mimics a boxing match, with its repetitive jabs, blocks, breakaways, and undercuts. The quieter sections of the film serve only as a rest between rounds until the fighting starts again. Raging Bull is a boxing match that never ends.

Yojimbo

This next film is not among AFI's 100 Best Films for obvious reasons, but it is a film I have seen recently and a film I liked enough to put it up along with the other two films in this post.

Yojimbo is directed by a filmmaker I greatly admire, and one who is a huge inspiration to many of today's most famous directors: Akira Kurosawa.

The film itself tells a rather simple tale: A wandering samurai finds himself in a village overrun with gang violence; two rival gangs are fighting over control of the town. The samurai concocts a plan to pit both gangs against each other so they basically kill each other. Of course, the plot is a bit more complex than that, but the beauty of Kurosawa's style is that he can juggle a large cast (with many different alliances and motivations) and a complex plot without sacrificing the emotional elements of the story.

After Raging Bull, Yojimbo is a far more subtle film. It doesn't strive for wild angles or a quick, furious editing style. Instead, Kurosawa uses more naturalistic elements to help build the tension. Follow the intensity of the wind throughout the film; it grows more and more fierce, blowing dust all over the place, as the film progresses. And it draws heavily on a Western motif, or is it the Western motif that draws heavily on Yojimbo? After all, it inspired Clint Eastwood's A Fistful of Dollars.

Having not received a satisfactory emotional payoff from The Graduate and Raging Bull, Yojimbo provided plenty of emotional payoff, but maybe that's because it didn't have an enigmatic ending. Every loose end was accounted for and tied off, with the exception of the lone samurai of course, who continues his wandering as he must.

E.T. + Cloverfield + 1/10th District 9 + 1/10th Goonies = Super 8

Much has been said about the Spielberg connection in Super 8, and after watching it this weekend, the connection is hard to miss. Super 8 is a nostalgic piece of film-making, a love-letter of sorts for a time and place. For Spielberg and Abrams, that time and place is their formative years as fledgling film-makers, earnestly carrying their Super 8 camera around, recruiting all of their friends, and anyone else willing to participate, all for the dream of making a movie. I remember those years well myself, although I didn't have a camera to capture all the adventures I had, just my toys and a notebook, but more on that later.

The film itself centers around Joe Lamb, who has lost his mother in a work-related accident, and his friends. He and his friends are trying to make a zombie movie for a film contest, and each of them have his (and later her) specific role: Charles is the director, the one with the vision; Martin is the actor, and is fittingly more than a bit over dramatic; Preston does sound, camera, anything the director needs basically; Cary, the pyromaniac, is of course the special effects expert (good evidence that some children NEED creative outlets); Joe does makeup and miniatures; and the newest addition, Alice, plays the love the interest in the movie in order to "give the zombie movie more of a narrative flow." The rapport between all of these actors is very natural. There's even one scene at a diner that reminded me of the kind of back-and-forth from The Goonies, so much so that it many of its lines might have been improvised by the cast.

While the entire cast is very good (the weakest being Ron Eldard, who plays Alice's father), it is Joel Courtney in his feature film debut (and according to IMDB this is first acting gig) who is the anchor for the entire movie and he does a phenomenal job. If the audience didn't feel an emotional connection with Joe, then the rest of the film would have fell flat on its face, despite all the special effects work. Elle Fanning (Alice) also delivers a very good performance, and the relationship between Alice and Joe is treated with a tenderness that is quite touching. Kyle Chandler (Jackson Lamb, Joe's father) can show a world of pain or tenderness with the slightest alteration of his face; he's not in every scene, but he makes his scenes count.

The special effects are good, not fantastic, with the exception of the train sequence, but this film proves that special effects are the not the important part of any film, and an audience is willing to forgive sub-par work in the face of a good story (Just look at some of the shows on TV). Too often film-makers and producers feel that a special effects heavy film can run on autopilot, straight to the bank. Well, that may be true if all you're looking for is first-weekend sales. Super 8 is a film that remembers that good science-fiction and horror is never about the supernatural, but about the human. The appeal in sci-fi and horror, at least for me, is not in the aliens and monsters, but in how the human characters handle themselves in the face of fantastic circumstances. The supernatural elements are merely catalysts.

Indeed, this film brought back some wonderful memories. I was never a very brave person when it came to "putting myself out there." So, even though I wanted to create films I couldn't bring myself to do anything that would bring undue notice or criticism upon myself, which is why I'm not a good actor. Good acting requires a willingness to look stupid and I'm not willing. However, I did develop stories and movie ideas in the safety of my room with my action figures. The good thing about that scenario was if something didn't work, story-wise, I could go back and change it immediately. I played out whole movies in my bedroom. It was fun and liberating. When books and films weren't enough, or when I got frustrated because one or the other didn't go in the direction I wanted, I created something new, a story I wanted to experience.

Super 8, as stated above, is a love-letter to anyone, young or old, whose desperate passion to create something new is all-consuming, even when others don't fully understand. And even though all of its pieces didn't always work, I got swept up in the story and the characters, enjoying every minute of it.