Vals Im Bashir

Waltz With Bashir

This movie is intense. Seriously fucking intense, and a lot of that intensity stems from the final moments of the film, which can do nothing but leave a strong psychological impact on the viewer. But more on that later.

In the early 80's, 19-year old Ari Folman was sent, along with many other young men in the Israeli Army, into Lebanon. Ari, like many of the soldiers, really weren't too sure why they were in Lebanon, or what their immediate missions were. They were sent there, and they fought, no questions asked. Over twenty years later, Ari Folman is a filmmaker in Israel, and is prompted by an old friend to do a project about the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and their roles in it. In being asked to do this, Folman finds that he has just about no memory of his time there, and claims that "it just wasn't stored in his system." However, his friend's request sparked something inside of Folman, and he launches into a journey of discovery, both internal and external, and Waltz with Bashir is born.

On the surface, Waltz is an animated movie, but it is also a war film. And as the film progresses, it actually goes from meta-story telling, a la Adaptation (a movie about the making of movie you are currently watching...like that scene in Spaceballs where they watch a video of the movie to gain information...remember that one? Good stuff) to a more straight documentary style, complete with talking heads in front of a backdrop and questions lofted by an off-screen Folman. The movie is also a journey, not only of the effects of the First Lebanon War on the psyches of the men involved and their surrounding environments, but also a journey into memory, and how the brain chooses to store certain information. A big theme of the film is memory, starting with Ari Folman recovering his own memories through a sequence of questioning other people, and then piecing together a time line of the invasion based on the disparate recollections of others involved. These recollections range from recounts of battles to descriptions of hallucinations, and this is where the animation really comes into play.

The mix of different animation styles gives the movie a very unique look, and beautiful and haunting imagery abound. Recreations of some of the war scenes would have been EXTREMELY expensive to film, if not impossible due to using the actual locations from over 25 years ago, and filming some of the hallucination sequences would have been similarly costly. So Folman goes the animated route, and the result is something nearing greatness. Not only is Folman's vision ambitious, but it is sustained well throughout the movie, and never gets old, boring or redundant. And then the end of the movie comes, and throws it all into a tailspin.

The central thread of Folman's journey into his own memories stems from an image that keeps coming back to him, an image that stops with him in an alleyway, as a herd of women in mourning pass by. By the end of the movie, he realizes that the image stems from a memory he has of standing inside a refugee camp in Lebanon, and seeing the Palestinian women and children mourning over the mass genocide committed by Lebanese Christians, while under the watchful eye of the Israeli Army. The animated women walk down a street, dead bodies all around them, their homes crumbles, and they wail and cry and scream in agony. And then just like that, in the blink of an eye, the movie cuts to real video from inside the refugee camps, and the mourning women and children. And that's when we realize that the audio we just heard, of the wailing women, was real, and the final minute of the film is video footage of the remains of the genocidal massacre. The last image is that of a dead child, buried in rubble. And the movie ends.

Sucker punch thrown! Sucker punch connected! Walking out of the theater, I immediately thought of a scene in the movie where Folman speaks with a psychiatrist about suppressed memories, and she tells Folman about a young soldier who got through the war by pretending everything was a film, and he was watching it through a camera. But he saw something so traumatic, that the camera broke, and the war became real for him. Folman did the same thing with his film. Sure, we are seeing some horrible images, but through the animation, much of it seems almost beautiful (I've never been so enamored of a close-up shot of an eye of a dead horse). But then the camera "breaks," and the veil is uncovered, and the viewer is shown the reality. We were being protected the whole time by watching this movie in animated form, and just like the soldier, that only lasts for so long. With the real footage of real consequences being shown at the tail end, Folman sends the audience out stunned and shocked, shambling their way through the aisles and stumbling towards the exits, their own comfort zones and notions of reality blasted into tiny fragments.

Frank Darabont's Stephen King's The Mist

The Mist (black & white version)

I read the short story The Mist in the Stephen King anthology Skeleton Crew. I was in middle school, and it is easily the only story I remembered at all from that book. There was just something about the premise (group of people trapped in a supermarket, which is surrounded by a mysterious and possibly monster-filled mist) that stuck with me over the years, and the ending really stuck in my craw, as the mist finally makes its way into the store and all hope is lost for everyone (spoiler!).

So now, all these years later, Frank Darabont goes back to the Stephen King well with The Mist, and he cranked out a pretty solid picture. I saw the movie in theaters when it was released, and while I was thrown by the somewhat changed ending, I left the movie feeling mostly satisfied. Mostly. There was something that didn't sit right with me, though I was not sure what that was. I felt, at the time, that the ending was a bit of a cop out in comparison to the original ending, though by no means is it "happy" or "Hollywood." In the original story, the people never even make it out of the supermarket. The Mist gets in. And its over, on to the next short story. But in the movie, they do get out, only to see some weird stuff, and then most of them die unnecessarily, just before the Army rolls through town with flame throwers (and apparently giant, invisible industrial fans because within 15 seconds the entire mist is gone. Caput. No más). So the Army gets the mist back under control, and the monsters are conceivably sent back to the hell they came from. The status quo, for the most part, has been restored, though the status quo for our main character David has been irrevocably changed forever. David, by the by, is played by Thomas Jane (Stander! Get wit' it, muther punchers!), who does an awesome job of playing the protective father, concerned citizen, and scared shitless store patron. The rest of cast is rounded out with more-than-capable character actors, people whose names are not known, but I guarantee every time they go out to get a gallon of milk, someone stops them and says, "man, you look really familiar...you sure you didn't go to my high school?" Marcia Gay Harden, Toby Jones, Andre Braugher and Jeff DeMunn are all great, especially Braugher and Jones, both doing their best to round out these somewhat thin characters into real people. Die Hard 2 main baddie William Sadler also gets some serious screen time as a "local," who makes things bothersome for some local Army Boy.

This second, at home viewing, was much stronger than the first time I saw the movie, and I think that's because of two things. The first is, I knew how it ended ahead of time, and I was ready for the crazy ending Darabont came up with, fully prepared for the film to eventually shift out of the supermarket, even if for only 5 minutes. So with that in mind, I was able to enjoy the rest of the movie more, without being worried about how they were gonna wrap the whole thing up. The second thing that made this viewing better was the fact that the film is also presented in black and white, as a special feature on disc 2 of the 2-disc special edition. And there is just something about that black & white, I'm not sure what it is, but IMMEDIATELY, from the opening frames, I could feel extra tension and dread with the b&w. Everything was just so much more creepier. The mist coming over the water and into the town? Fucking terrifying. Within minutes I was completely sold on this alt version of The Mist (Darabont's preferred version of the film as well) and it actually saddens me to think that I could have seen this in a movie theatre, except that movie studios and distributors know that Joe Q. Moviegoing Public doesn't want to see a black and white film, cause that's old fashioned and out dated. I've actually heard people make the argument that all movies in black and white are boring, and there is no way a movie not in color could be exciting or entertaining or worthwhile. I call these people "fucking morons." They don't even deserve to watch movies. They should be strapped to a chair and forced to watch the Fox Reality Channel all day. Assholes. They can keep their Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Night at the Museum and Underworld 3. I mean, they're all in color, right? So they HAVE to be better than The Treasure of the Sierra Madre or The Big Sleep or The Killing. Right? Right? Assholes.

No, the black and white makes The Mist better. Not only is the film aesthetically more pleasing, scarier and creepier, but the effects work looks much less wonky for the most part. The first attack on the store, the tentacles shooting out from under the loading dock door and trying to eat Norm the Bag Boy, looked pretty awful when I saw it in theatres. Blown up on a huge screen and in color, it just didn't look real in any way shape or form. It doesn't help that about ten minutes later, we are shown are piece of a tentacle, but that piece is a real prop, and not CGI, and it just makes the previous tentacle attack look THAT much more fake. But the black and white hid that, somehow. The light played off the tentacles differently, and it blended into the environment more. Not saying it looked real. Still looked CG. But it definitely looked BETTER. Same with some of the spider and giant bug attacks later on in the movie. The effects just look better integrated into the movie, and helps with the overall experience. The monster-effects in the movie range from "looks like shit" to "holy shit," with my favorite being the reveal of the giant 6-legged Cthulu monster strolling around New England. My roommate declared that to be the "gayest part of the whole movie," but I have to say I think it was the "awesome-est," but that just might be my own personal desires to see a faithful, and fucking scary, Lovecraft horror story on the big screen, complete with giant squid monsters from alternate dimensions. Cthulu, motherfuckas!

My main complaint with Frank Darabont's Stephen King's The Mist is that Mr. Darabont just likes to hit the nail directly on the head a little too often. I guess gravity really effects him more and more as he ages, cause his hands are getting heavy. When David leads a small group out of the supermarket and to his car, and they drive past the front of the supermarket on their way out, some really overt music is playing, complete with vocal choir, and its just too damn much. Or the whole Religious Cult angle that plays out with Marcia Gay Harden's Mrs. Carmody, as she babbles on and on about this being God's Wrath and gaining followers. All of this stuff played to an obvious crescendo, and when Carmody gets shot to shit by Toby Jones (spoiled milk!), its a welcome feeling not only because Carmody was such a bitch, but because that meant the subplot was finally over, and we could get back to the monsters in the mist, which is what I came here for in the first place.

In the end, however, black & white The Mist is pretty damn awesome, and much like the American, MPAA-approved cut of Kill Bill Vol. 1, or the FOX-altered theatrical cut of Kingdom of Heaven, I doubt I will ever go back and watch the colorized version of this movie. There's just no point. It is so much better without the full range of colors that I would love to see more movies done in black and white. Is that so bad? Asking for more artistic value in my art? Just a smidgen? Anyone? Anyone?

Cocaine Cowboys

Cocaine Cowboys

This is a pretty sweet documentary that tells the real-life stories behind the drug trade so prominently featured in Miami Vice and Scarface. In the early 70's, the Colombians started sending a wee bit of cocaine over with their huge shipments of marijuana, but no one was really buying coke cause it was expensive as hell. So the first coke heads were doctors and lawyers and generally people that could afford the raised prices. But after awhile, the market was saturated with weed, and coke started catching on as the new thing. And a strong, thriving commercial industry was born! Good old supply and demand.

So the movie spends the first hour or so interviewing a pair of transporters, guys who were making millions of dollars just bringing the shit into the country and distributing it to wholesalers. And they did this for a good 5 or 6 years before they were busted, and even then, they claim they were only busted because someone they worked with who got busted by the Feds had turned all Henry Hill on them and gave up the ghost. But in the meantime, these guys had mad bread and did whatever the hell they wanted. And in the process, with the huge influx of money in the Miami area came an economic boom. I liked that this doc took the time to examine the monetary benefits of a booming drug trade, and how a city can actually benefit from this. In the early 80's, Miami had more banks than anywhere else, with exponentially higher averages of cash deposits than the banks in the rest of the country. Hell, when the Savings & Loan disaster of the 80's nearly crippled the country (much like a certain current Credit disaster), Miami actually continued to grow and prosper, and this film asserts that all that growth and prosperity was a direct result of the cocaine trade between Colombia and America.

Meanwhile, Fidel Castro gathers up all of Cuba's "wretched refuse" and ships them off to America. And America had to take 'em. Says so right on that friggin' statue in NYC. So Miami then gets an influx of Cuban criminals and street thugs (along with the poor, old, crippled, etc.), who find a world of money awaiting them in the form of the coke trade. This is where the movie shifts, and segues from the adventures of two millionaire coke-runners to the reign of terror of Griselda Blanco, a fucking crazy bitch with a serious blood thirst. Every day she ordered new hits on drug dealing rivals, and the violence in Miami escalated like woah. We're talking upwards of 600 murders in one year. That's nuts. And throughout this section of the movie, we get the goods from one of Blanco's right hand men and lead enforcer, who tells his story from the confines of his prison. He details all sorts of hits and stories about people crossing Blanco and her desire to exact retribution. Hell, she was the type of person to order a hit on a table of 6 people, in which she really only wanted two of them dead but saw the other four as simple collateral damage. There's even a part where the Lead Enforcer recounts a time when he went to see Scarface with a bunch of his fellow thugs, and they all laughed out loud at the failed hit on Tony Montana in the club, asserting that they all would have hit their target in that situation. Fucking pyschos.

So the movie is pretty good, though I do have a complaint. There were a couple of times when they started to touch upon something that I found of particular interest, but it gets the gloss over. Example: Griselda Blanco had actually been arrested and charged with several murders, but through some sort of legal cockup, she was able to get away with a very minimal sentence (as opposed to going to jail for life for the murder of dozens and dozens of people, if not hundreds). And this part of the story is skimmed over, though I want to know what the hell happened and who fucked up. They had Blanco in custody, along with her enforcer, who was ready to sing like canary for a reduced sentence (possible death sentence reduced to several concurrent life sentences), but then she gets away, slipping through the cracks of the US legal system. Another example: one of the coke transporters spent 6 years on the run as a fugitive before being caught by the Feds, and I wanna know how the hell he managed to evade them for so long, and why was he finally caught? That's a crazy story that would have been awesome to explore, but it gets summed up in two sentences at the end of the movie. Basically, I think the filmmakers could have done a better job of picking the best parts of the story and expanding on them. The movie is 2 hours long, and it felt a little longer. I mean, how many different murders and hit jobs do we have to hear about? What about the other aspects of these peoples lives?

Anyway, in the end, I dug this movie. The Jan Hammer score is The Tits, and the movie moves along a pretty good clip, although it does start to feel long around the final 20 minutes or so. I would say this movie is a couple steps above a made-for-tv documentary, though I'm not upset that I didn't see this on a big screen. It seems to fall somewhere in the middle, which is okay.

What in the name of fuck?

Is this for real? Am I dreaming? Did I trip and fall into a roaming wormhole, sending me into some sort of strange fucking universe that I can not even begin to wrap my puny brain around?

Are there really three movies coming out this year called I Love You Beth Cooper, I Love You Phillip Morris and I Love You, Man?

Fucking seriously?

Ugh.

The Wrestler

The Wrestler

Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler is pretty much Rocky Balboa, but if Rocky Balboa was about pro wrestling and was directed by a genius. With his fourth film, Aronofsky has made a crafty, sneaky little film, a movie with a seemingly paper thin story about redemption and place, and though it appears to be his least stylized film, the style is still there, just in a different fashion. So with sure handed and smart direction, coupled with excellent acting...well, we get pretty much the best movie of 2008, eh? (I say pretty much cause I never really sat down to figure out such a quantifiable abstract as my film Top Ten...but if I did do one, this would be top 3 easily...easily).

So by now everyone knows that Mickey Rourke plays the titular wrestler, named Randy "The Ram" Robinson, and that Rourke is amazing. And yes, I have to agree. Rourke is indeed amazing in this role. Definitely one of those roles (like Hellboy for Ron Perlman or Jim Morrison for Val Kilmer) where the actor seemed born to play the part. Not only born, but Rourke even lived the part (as every one also knows, so I'll skip it). So we have an amazing Rourke. Marisa Tomei continues her bid for sexiest 40+ year old on the planet with a role that sees her nude for most of the running time. No complaints about that here. But the nudity isn't there for nudity's sake. You wanna see tits? Use Google. Way easier and cheaper. Aronofsky has a plan for the nudity, as he juxtaposes the lives of a past her prime stripper and a past his prime wrestler. See, both professions are based on body image. Wrestlers and Strippers both sell their bodies, and both for voyeuristic pleasures. Wrestlers and Strippers both use fake names for the professions, and both have issues with being called by their real names, though for somewhat different reasons. Stripper Cassidy doesn't want to be called "Pam," because Pam is the mother to her child and the real person in the real world. And the real world is somewhere where Pam hopes to end up permantently, without having to be in a state of undress. A better future for her kid, and all that noise. However, Randy doesn't want to be called by his real name because he doesn't like the real world. He made his forays into the real world, via trying to reconnect with his daughter, or getting a non-wrestling job, or asking a chick out for a drink, and none of them worked out. Randy feels completely rejected by that world, and only feels the love and warmth that can be found, ironically enough, in a wrestling ring.

This is where the movie really excels, in that the portrayal of this world of professional wrestling has not been done ever. At least not in a fictional narrative. Most wrestling pictures were hunks of crap, and I mean steaming hunks of fly infested shit. There is one sweet wrestling documentary, however, called Beyond the Mat, that is very worth checking out, especially after watching The Wrestler. That one shows the brutal toll these men pay to do their jobs. To this day, people still think wrestlers know how to fall so that they don't get hurt at all, and that all the blood is fake, simple ketchup packets, and nothing really hurts. But that's all bullshit. Sure, these guys are trained to make it look like they are destroying each other without really breaking each other's backs and necks, but when they are done flying around the ring and slamming each other around, they are in pain. And then they go out to the next show and do it all again. And again and again and again, for years and years and years, until they end up in wheelchairs, or with crutchs, just broken down old men who gave it their all to the fans. That's what the movie gets right. Randy's love of the fans, and feeding off the energy they give him. Randy definitely appears to be a mix of many different wrestlers (wrestling aficionados will recognize bits of Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Mick Foley and Ric Flair in the composition that makes The Ram), but the common trait of all wrestlers is the desire to make the audience really pop. And if that means throwing each other into the crowd and beating each other with garbage cans and prostetic legs, then so be it.

The Wrestler focuses on the part of the wrestling world that is not seen on TV. Since the 80's, the WWF has been the main wrestling product on television. In the 90's, they had some competition with World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), and the ratings battle between the three companies had propelled professional wrestling to an all time high. However, by 2000, WCW and ECW were both out of money and out of business, crushed by the WWF, who then turned around and purchased both WCW and ECW. So now the only wrestling product on TV is WWF produced, so it all looks the same, and feels the same, and has the same glossy sheen and ridiculous production values (ridiculous as in, huge arenas, giant sets and indoor firework displays). The Wrestler stays away from that world completely, because Randy is out of that world. He's washed up, a has been. He's old, looks beat up, and his heart is giving out on him. The best he can do is wrestle small time gigs, where he makes about $200 a shot (and that's for being the headliner) and can help nuture the young up and coming guys. He wrestles in school gymnasiums and VF Halls, and it is rather depressing. Randy probably had a good deal of money in his heyday of the 80's, and he definitely blew it all because now he lives in a trailer (at least when he can pay the rent) and can't even afford to pay his local drug dealer (fortunately the guy let's him take $1000 worth of drugs for a down payment of about $450. Not a bad guy...). Of Note: Aronofsky Player Mark Margolis has a small part as Randy's landlord, though I don't think he ever gets within 20 feet of the camera.

And the portrayal of the wrestling fans was interesting, pretty wrestling fans have become pretty smart, in terms of knowing their products and knowing how it all works. Especially with the advent of the internet, the veil covering the supposed "realness" of wrestling was lifted, and the average fan could be privy to a lot of the backstage shenanigans that made wrestling companies run. The fans that go to these little VFW shows full of old timers, has beens, never was's and never gonna be's are real wrestling fans, people that enjoy that the athleticism and drama on display live. They know that when The Ram punches The Ayatolla, he's not really hitting him. But they cheer as if he did anyway, because that's why they are all there. For the spectacle. For the sport. For the fun. It's a give and take, much like watching a movie. You don't sit down to watch Star Wars, and then bitch the whole time about the movie being unbelieveble. You go for the ride. You know its a sci-fi fantasy film, and you enjoy those elements. The same goes for professional wrestling. People know its fake, but still watch it cause its fun. And the fans in the movie were just like that, coming up with various chants for different moves or wrestlers ("You still suck! You still suck! You still suck!" or old ECW-fan favorite "Ho-lee Shit! Ho-lee Shit! Ho-lee Shit!").

But it was heartbreaking, seeing Randy kill himself for these people. Sure, they love him, as a wrestling character, but none of them are gonna help him pay his rent. None of them are there for him when he is alone at night, chasing his painkillers with beer and looking at a mural of old pictures. The only thing he has at night is himself and his memories. And some of those memories aren't so good. Like the ones about his daughter, whom he abandoned, and now wants to reconnect with. This part of the movie is great for several reasons. First, there was a lot of emotion between Randy and his daughter Stephanie, played by Evan Rachel Wood, and these scenes were often brutal to watch because of the obvious chasm between the two characters, which was created by the selfishness and arrogance of one The Ram. There are also only about 4 scenes that deal with their relationship, but so muchy happens in those four scenes that I'm glad there wasn't more. The movie is about Randy's road to redepemption, and along the way he tried to patch things up with his daughter, and that brings me to the final reason why I think this section works great, and that's the true to life resolution of this problem. Randy fucks up (again) and leaves Stephanie waiting in a restaurant for two hours, waiting for him to show, which he doens't do. So in a final confrontation, she disowns him. She tells her father to fuck off, and she never wants to see him again, and that's that. Randy had his chance and he blew it, and he doesn't get another one. Not every road to redemption is gonna be paved to the very end. Sometimes you might find yourself, like Randy, heading down that road, and you find you get to a gorge, and the bridge is out. And all you can do is find a long way around, or head back and find another road. Cause this one is a dead end, brother.

So shortly after, Randy finds another road, and that's the well paved road of pro wrestling, which he decides to continue with despite having a heart attack and bypass surgery. He knows the risk involved, but doesn't care, because he knows that where he belongs. It must be tough, knowing that if you do want you want to do, it could lead to your demise. How many people are willing to follow their dreams, goals and desires to those extreme ends? Randy the Ram will go to those lengths. Because that's his existence. Sure, he TRIED working at the deli counter at the super market. And he was doing alright at first, cause he's Randy and he tries to make the best of his situation, but it doesn't work out in the end. Not even close. And why should it? We're not watching The Deli Counter Worker. We're watching The Wrestler. That is who he is, and he rides that rocket to the end of the line.

Aronofsky is the type of director to use a lot of style in his films, and his stylistic choices, for the most part, change from film to film. Pi is stylistically different from Requiem for a Dream, which is different from The Fountain, and The Wrestler is different from all of them. The more subtle camera work would lead one to believe that the movie is devoid of style, but that's not nearly the case. The camera is often set behind Randy, following him around, as he trudges through his life. Randy is leading us through his story, and often that image of him walking through a doorway or hall bring to mind images of Randy before he walks through the curtain and heads to the ring. That's the moment he lives for, when his music comes on, and he parts those curtains and the crowd roars. That doesn't happen when he walks through the door to the deli counter, however, and that is part of the reason why he just wasn't gonna work out there. Sound design has always been very important to Aronofsky as well, and the sound design of this movie is also subtle. Example: every time Randy takes out or puts in his hearing aid, we get a little "eeeeeeeee" as it goes in or out. Or when Randy has heart troubles, and the sounds change to reflect more of what he hears, and the discomfort he is going through. Intense stuff to see in a large, dark room, surrounded by speakers.

So yeah, The Wrestler is pretty awesome. Great, small story, about a subject that doesn't get this kind of treatment, filmed by a true auteur and populated with daring actors. This is definitely a movie I would recommend to anyone who likes movies in any way. Just about everything about it is done well, and I look forward to watching it again and absorbing more.

BARAKA

Ron Fricke is a dude that knows how to work a camera. In 1982, he shot the documentary film Koyaanisqatsi, a movie with no plot or narrative, per se, but instead a collection of extremely well shot images, usually juxtaposed together to make some sort of point. Usually that point is lost on the home viewer in a haze of pot smoke. But alas, Ron Fricke didn't give a fuck, cause in 1992 he engaged in another similar endeavor, this being a film called Baraka, another ensemblage of sweet looking images, ranging from nature to man made structures.

As suggested by a friend, I watched Baraka with the soundtrack off (a "world music" soundtrack, which no doubt included at least one Yanni tune), and put on my iPod, picking my own playlist. And that was a kick ass suggestion. I used music from the Solaris (Soderbergh's) soundtrack, The Fountain soundtrack, instrumental rock music from East of the Wall, Explosions in the Sky and Pelican, and the aural oddity that is Godspeed! You Black Emperor, and the resulting expedrience was quite amazing. It's funny how often random music set to random images can result in something that actually matches every now and then. There were plenty of times when a particular song would kick in, or change gears, and the accompanying images on screen would shift appropriately, and I would just think to myself, "Yes!" It is my intention to watch this film with different "soundtracks" each time. Hell, I might even watch it with the original "world music" score. Crazier things have happened.

The time lapse shots are great, and the movie is full of them. A huge intersection in Tokyo fills and empties over and over in a minute. The sun sets over a mountain range in seconds. Cameras are trained on the starry sky, and a time lapse allows us to see the curvature of the sky as the stars rotate around. Ron Fricke (the guy who didn't give a fuck) also takes his crew into the jungles and gets some footage of Indian natives chillin' and doin' their thang, celebrating and singing and dancing. And then he jumps to footage of people working in a cigarette factory, and cuts that together with other footage, and adds other stuff, and shows more crazy things, and cuts back to the original stuff, and by the time its all over, you're like, "Woah." As a matter of fact, I think I said "woah" about 10 times throughout the movie. That's about a woah a minute. Sounds about right.

"Finish him!"

Me & Aronofsky could be best buds...

This just warms my heart. Must make note of it.

From this article about The Wrestler:

"I used to love the Van Damme and Steven Seagal films when they came out. They were fun. They’re not making those kinds of movies in America any more; they prefer legitimate superheroes: middle-class, medium-build guys who become these pumped-up superheroes like Schwarzenegger, Stallone, Van Damme and Seagal from the 1980s. We don’t have many of those guys any more. Maybe Gerard Butler or Jason Statham, but it’s different. Then it was about body, now it’s about costumes. With our film, I don’t think we were commenting on those movies, but I’m sure it was floating around in my subconscious. There’s a lot about bodybuilding culture in “The Wrestler” and I’m sure that derives from all the early Schwarzenegger stuff like “Pumping Iron”."

Madea Goes to Jail? Seriously?

Choose Your Own Snarky Internet Comment:

a) Will Tyler Perry's Madea Save Christmas next? And then will she be Scared Stupid?

b) Most pretentious poster for a crossdresser-based movie. Ever.

c) Tyler Perry's Remake of Purple Rain?

d) The first ever Tyler Perry film directed by John Woo. Hing Kong weeps.

BURN AFTER READING

BURN AFTER READING

The Coen Brothers are my favorite working directors (have been since The Man Who Wasn't There), and their recent resurgence after a few years in the creative wilderness has been awesome to behold. I'm going to keep my actually critique of Burn After Reading short, because with very few exceptions, I love each Coens Bros movie I see, and suspect that I am now just a sucker for their particular quirks and idiosyncrasies, and as such can love just about anything they put forward (just about anything). I eagerly await their adaptation of Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union, and whatever films they release between now and that one. In the meantime, we have been given BAR to devour, and devour the public did. At least in terms of a Coens film, as a $19 million opening weekend is their biggest to date, and the near $150 worldwide take more than covers the reported budget of $37 million. And it is easy to see why BAR would do so well, with popular stars like George Clooney and Brad Pitt acting like buffoons, and a very funny take on the world of government intelligence (in an era where whole wars have been blamed on "bad intelligence"), the movie was fairly well reviewed, and it continues to gain popularity on home video. The movie is hysterical, if not bitingly dark and cynical, well acted and, of course, well directed. Only the Coens could wring so much suspense from the construction of a dildo-chair, or straight up kill Brad Pitt 2/3rds of the way through the movie (spoiler!).

What I found most interesting about this movie, however, is how it seems to be a response to the public reception of No Country for Old Men, a film I loved but split the movie community in half, i.e. people who love the last 30 minutes vs. people who hate the last 30 minutes. After No Country was released last year, debated raged over the third act, and how the Coens killed main character # 1 off-screen, and then had main characters #2 and #3 circle around each other but never meet. And then #2 goes home and retires and #3 gets in a car accident but walks away to kill another day. And as the movie ends with #2 recounting a dream about his father and about death, one could feel the ripple of "what the fuck" that went through so many mainstream multiplexes. Some loved it, while others did not. And the Coens received one of their most mixed critical responses ever. And I think some of the negative nancys kind of got to them. And this is why I think this.

The end of No Country was befuddling to many people. Some things were left to open interpretation, allowing the viewer to take out of the movie whatever they wanted to or could, and the ending was not a traditional film ending in terms of a story being wrapped up. The story did wrap up, but not in the way most movies do, and not in the way a lot of people want to see a story end. People like closure. They want an definitive ending, and if there is a message to the movie, they want to be told what it is. When this doesn't happen, the people get a little pissy. The ones that don't like to think for themselves, at least, and make an attempt to understand why a director made a certain decision. So now they make BAR, in which the final few minutes feel like a direct response to those people who hated the ending to No Country. A CIA Officer reports the goings-on of the film's characters to a CIA Superior, who is happy to have everything swept under the rug and gotten rid of quickly. The CIA Officer tells the Superior about what happened to a major character (off screen!), and then the Superior asks the Officer "What did we learn from all of this?" And they sit for a moment and think, and the Superior admits that he has no fucking idea what there is to be learned, and it was just time to move on.

To have your film end with a character openly asking "What have we learned from this?" is fucking BALLSY. You are daring the audience to go back and think about the movie they just saw, and to determine its worth and value in universal truths. "We gave you something to chew on with No Country and you spat it out...well, how did you like chewing on this, you ingrates?" Burn definitely feels like a mirror image film to No Country. With the exception of Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh, the characters of No Country were all real people with real issues and reactions. And that one non-real character is the one to live. Burn showcases people with severe emotional and social problems, and a severe lack of intelligence, and almost all of them are presented as caricatures of real people, as opposed to real people. The one character that comes across as a real and sympathetic person is the Gym Manager, played by Richard Jenkins, and we get to see him get axed in the street. No room for the real in this world. No Country had practically no score (I'd say that movie is 99% score-free), whereas Burn features an awesome soundtrack by Coens go-to-guy Carter Burwell, which really helps escalate some of the tension and black humor of the movie. And where No Country gives you an ending without spoon feeding, and let's the audience decide and discuss what happened and what it meant, Burn comes out and tells you that you might as well have not learned anything from this comical farce, and that's okay but you really don't have to. You can just watch it, and forget about it. Sweep it under the rug. Burn after reading, if you will. Or you can choose to really appreciate it, and look into the subtext and layers which are always present in a Coens film, even the rare shitty ones.

Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire

I heard about this movie for awhile before I finally got a chance to see it, due to the film being released in foreign markets before getting its platform release here in the good ole USA. So I think the movie was built up a little too much for me, because I don't see it as Danny Boyle's best film (that would be Trainspotting), or even as one of the best films of the year. Slumdog is pretty awesome, but I had some problems with it. Let's dig a little, shall we?

Right off the bat, this movie has crazy energy bursting off the screen. From the locations, to the actions, to the music, everything leads to a feeling of lift and just pure "Go!," which is interesting considering the extremely poor and cramped conditions the protagonists (two brothers and some chick) go through on a daily basis. Thanks to movies like these, I can go to these crazy, poor places, like the extensive slums of India, and see how these people not only manage to live in these conditions, but live their lives as best as they can. The dream for every kid is to get out. And that includes our three kids, who all go up to young twenty-somethings by the end of the movie. I loved all the cultural aspects of the film, and how the movie shows us so many different facets of an before unseen world by me.

The story itself is basically an old school fairy tale, in that the hero goes through a lot of crazy shit before getting what he desires, though usually at a cost (those old Grimms Bros fairy tales were FUCKED up). And the movie is pretty up front about destiny, and things happening because "it is written." But that just gives the movie an excuse to have a plot set up entirely on coincidences. The younger brother, Jamal, becomes a contestant on the wildly popular Indian version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" (we know it is wildly popular because the phone operators at Jamal's place of employment abandon their stations to watch the show in the breakroom, and even a badass gangsters sit down to watch that shit). Jamal manages to make it all the way to the final question, which is something no one else has done, and he is under investigation by the police for cheating. The movie shows this by showing Jamal answer a question on the show, then we cut to the police station where the detective asks him, "How'd you know that?" and then we are shown the story in Jamal's life that gave him the answer to the question. Example: When Jamal is a kid he gives a blind friend a $100 bill. The blind friend asks who is on the bill, and Jamal reads it and tells him. 15 years in the future, the question on the show is "Who is on the $100 bill?" and he knows it Franklin. Cute. Except that shit happens for every question except for one. And I call bullshit on that. That's the problem with fairy tales. By adding a little magic, or a talking mirror, or by coming out and saying "It's all fate, folks!," the story can have any ridiculous coincidences and plot tricks to movie the story forward. So the fact that this story is based on a whole system of coincidences (and not clockwork -like coincidences, but real fucking pure happenstance) really bugs me.

The movie is really well made, very pretty to look at, and full of great music and acting. Boyle knows how to make a movie, that's for sure, but I don't know if you knows how to wrap up a story. 28 Days Later and Sunshine both have great set ups and abysmal third acts, and Slumdog just feels like lazy writing throughout. I'll keep seeing what this guy has to offer, but I hope either the writing gets better, or he hooks up with better writers.

Documentarama! Non-Fic-Pic-A-GoGo!

Time to dish quick on the numerous documentaries I've seen in the past month or so.

CRAWFORD

This one is about Crawford, TX, the adopted hometown of a certain infamous President George W. Bush. I admire that someone seemed to have had the foresight to document the entire saga of George Bush moving into Crawford 6 months before running for President all the way through his final years in the White Office as the sovereign leader of two wars and a disapproving public. Interestingly, what the town went through mimicked what the President went through. When his approval ratings were up, town tourism was at an all time high. And before the Prez moved in, Crawford was straddling the line between a small, pleasant community and a economically depressed near ghost town. With the tourism came the dollars, and with the dollars came some growth, and Crawford slowly started to revive. And then Junior made a few millions Americans upset with this policies, and tourism faded from very Pro-Bush Crawford. What happens to the town eventually is pretty interesting, if not a little sad, as much like America, Bush didn't seem to leave Crawford a better place from when he found it. What's the opposite of a Midas touch? The Junior Touch?

Where the film succeeds is in following the lives of certain people throughout their 8 years, with the focus being on a student who is in 8th grade when Bush moves into town, and a struggling 20 year old when we reach the end of the line. The amount of growth a person does from year to year can be exponential in the teens and twenties, and this one student's growth throughout his teens is interesting to follow, and pretty well done put together. Also interesting is the local Bush souvenir store, which is going under along with the town and El Presidente.

CONFESSIONS OF A SUPERHERO

This movie starts out as funny but then gets kinda sad. And from beginning to end it has a sort of beauty and dignity that one would not expect from a movie about this particular subject. That subject is, of course, about the lives of people who dress up like super heroes and take pictures with tourists for tip money. These people congregate on Hollywood Blvd. in LA and dumb tourists take pictures with them, and as the tourists approach, the people have to inform them that they work on tips. These people are essentially panhandling, and I don't see why more homeless people don't just dress up and have their picture taken with tourists.

We follow four people mostly, a Superman look-a-like, a Batman look-a-like, a black guy in a Hulk costume and a chick dressed as Wonder Woman. And all four people have some sort of serious issues. The Superman guy is a little creepy in his obsession over the character, and he makes some seemingly dubious claims about who his mother is and where he comes from. The Batman look-a-like actually also does work as a George Clooney impersonator, which is pretty hysterical in itself, and he has crazy anger issues. He also makes somewhat dubious claims about escaping some sort of mafia life, and about killing people. One weird moment finds him in a psychiatrist's office, in his full Batman suit, talking about killing people in the past and being all weird about it. The Hulk impersonator is a dude just trying to make it big, and at one point was homeless and sleeping in a little alleyway. And the Wonder Woman chick is the typical smalltown girl escaping to LA and trying to make it big in Hollywood. But the biggest she's gonna make it is filling out a pair of blue booty shorts and posing with strangers on the street for a handful of bucks. But it gives these people something to do at least. We gotta get the homeless to a costume shop, and quick.

THE PARTY'S OVER

The Party's Over follows a then relatively unknown Philip Seymoiur Hoffman through the 2000 Presidential campain elections, and he checks out both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions to become more informed of the process, and to find out why certain people get so involved and why others do not. Though Hoffman definitely seems to align more with the sensibilities of the Democratic Party, he does his best to give the Republicans a fair voice and to have their reasons heard clearly. He visits gun shows, NRA conventions, Christian Coalitions and the RNC itself to find out what these people want in a president (answer: family values and honesty). Then he goes to the DNC in LA and finds out what they want in a president (answer: family values and honesty). While at the DNC in LA, Hoffman checks out something called the Shadow Convention, where people like Bill Maher speak and call out both the DNC andRNC for being two halves of the same coin.

The most interesting part of the documentary is the focus on protests and the police reactions to them. At both convention, protestors were pushed around and assualted by police forces and some of the footage is crazy, like Rodney King Riots style crazy. I didn't see Hoffman take on any cops, but I'm sure he had a molotov cocktail tucked away ready to go.

STANDARD OPERATING PROCEDURE

SOP is an Errol Morris documenatary about the Abu Ghraib scandals, an American-run prison in the middle east where prisoners were held, questions and tortured. This kind of stuff is old news (centures old) but the twist here is the Information Age. Several genius soldiers stationed at Abu Ghraib documented all sorts of prisoners abuse throughout the prison, most of them claiming that the pictures were taken with the intention of whistle-blowing, but the pictures leaked to the media first, and caused a shirt storm. SOP follows the timeline of all these pictures and interviews all the people that were involved in a search for the truth of what happened.

This is the first Errol Morris film I've seen, and I was surprised by his style and flash. Morris tends to use abstract imagery a decent amount, including great slo-mo shots of playing cards hitting a table and a helicopter explosion as seen from directly below. Morris tells the story in a quick paced, yet thorough manner, and gives the viewers just the right information at just the right times. The subject matter was pretty heavy, but I still enjoyed watching it, and that says a lot about a movie like this.

THE FOG OF WAR

So I followed up SOP with The Fog of War, Morris's film about Robert McNamara's influence on US Foreign Policy in the 60s and 70s. McNamara was a self made man and a strategist turned to by Presidents and other higher ups. And in the film, McNamara sits down and looks back in his career, and accounts for everything he said and did in the past, and why he made certain decisions.

Throughout the movie, McNamara talks directly to the camera (like all of Morris' subjects) and it feels like he it sitting right there, telling you how it was and why he did what he did. TFOW is an insightful look into how some of the bigger decisions are made and what factors go into the decision making process of war. There is less abstract imagery in this movie than in SOP, but I gather that is because Morris has more actual footage to work with, including old news reels and clips, home video footage and other such old documentary footage. Plus he had the real deal, McNamara himself, sitting in front of a camera, answering his questions. Really can't beat that.

MAN ON WIRE

Man On Wire is one of my favorite movies of 2008. MOW is the story of French tightrope walker Philippe Petite, who walked on a tightrope between the buildings that made up the World Trade Center, which at the time was just completed and held the title of Tallest Buildings In the World. The magic of MOW comes through both Petit's storytelling abilities and the amount of original footage the egotistical bastard shot of himself and his friends back in the early 70s. Petit did a lot of tightrope walking practice in his backyard and filmed a lot of it, and also had his friends film a few of his walks which led up to the Twin Towers, including a walk between the towers of a high bridge.

MOW is told like a heist film, as Petit and his friends had to essentially break into the tower and use the dark, overnight hours to put the put between the buildings, all the while avoiding security and just trying not to fall off the world's largest building. My favorite section of the movie actually deals with the contruction of the Twin Towers, and having seen so much fucking footage of the Towers collapsing in NYC, it was nice to see some footage of them going up, and seeing all the people busting their asses to make that monstrosity come true in real American fashion. There was a great part where Petit and his friends, wanting to get a close up look off the top of the towers, posed as European journalists and were escorted to the top of the contruction site, where they could get photographs for dimension purposes. To carry out the ruse, they brought along a tape recorder and asked the contruction workers questions, and took a bunch of photos of the people working there. And even though they were lying about their purpose, it was all used just the same, as the questions and answers are played over the photos taken that day. The movie has a lot of great little pay offs like that, and one big great pay off when Petit walks the rope between the buildings with hundreds of people looking on.