Tag Archives: drama

It’s a Funny Kind of Story

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It’s really no wonder I see as many movies as I do, since I intend (with failures, sure, but the intent is always there) to see a movie on any given Wednesday afternoon, and then I still see other movies on the weekends or whenever. This Wednesday’s movie was It’s Kind of a Funny Story, an accurately-titled light drama about an overstretched New York City teen who asks to be committed to a mental hospital to get away from his suicidal thoughts, and only realizes after the fact what being committed actually means. And then he, y’know, learns about life and love and himself, and a lot of his fellow patients learn about these things on the way. If this sounds more than a little twee, well, it kind of was, but it had that type of self-aware tweeness that seems to say, look, this is basically a real story, and sometimes life can be a little twee, and, what are ya gonna do?

But the important thing is that it was often funny and extremely sweet, and sometimes I like movies that make me feel good. (I always like movies that make me laugh.) Oh, and another important thing is that it was populated in the main by very talented actors. Other than a few of the ancillary high school kids, pretty much everyone was really good. Good enough for me to take note of it, I mean, and one has to be a pretty strong outlier (in either the good or bad direction) for me to take note of one’s acting skill. So there’s that. But mainly, the funny and the sweet.

Machete (2010)

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I don’t even know where to begin. All I can tell you is that from the moment Machete started until the credits rolled (complete with promised sequels!), I had a grin on my face the size of Texas. At one point, I believe I actually whooped at the screen. There is just not enough hyperbole in the world to express how much I loved this movie, and I know I’m going overboard with the praise already, like by a lot, but I can’t stop myself. It is really comparable in plot and character development to what 2012 did with set design and special effects. In fact, if 2012 had not existed, I would call this the most over-the-top movie I’d ever seen, and I still think the fact that it goes in other directions will make anyone who loved that movie love this one without having to feel like it’s ripping anything off.

Of course, Machete is ripping something off, and that something is an entire decade of drive-in cinema, picking and choosing plot points, recurring themes, and larger than life characters at will to create the ultimate expression of 1970s badassery. Oh, and it’s ripping off limbs and heads by the cart-load, but that probably goes without saying. I don’t think there’s a single character that Danny Trejo (in the eponymous role) doesn’t fight or fuck his way through on his rampage through a slightly surreal version of Austin to take out Steven Seagal’s conniving drug lord; it’s not clear that Machete knows any other way to interact with the populace at large. Robert Rodriguez has surpassed Planet Terror in every way, and all with a movie he fleshed out from a fake trailer, apparently because modern politics reminded him of the idea? I am grateful to you, crazy Arizonan lawmakers!

I kind of wish I was watching it again, right now.

The Expendables (2010)

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You have likely seen various previews for The Expendables, the main selling point of which is that it contains 75% of the action stars from the past three decades. I mean, of the previews, not the movie. My point is that the previews did not actually try to sell the movie on any axis other than star power. And there is some extent to which I have to agree with this decision, because the script was only barely distinguishable from some of the early ’70s Marvel comics I’ve been reading lately; about the only significant differences are a) the lack of radiation-spawned superheroes and b) the concept of the tinpot island dictator having American backing; after all, we weren’t very cynical quite yet, as of 1971. Still, it was on the whole a pretty decent movie in which a lot of familiar people are involved in a wide variety of car chases, gun battles, and explosions, just as advertised. Don’t expect to have any significant memories about it the next day, though.

Despite this barely positive review, I feel compelled to make two more complaints beyond the genericism. Firstly, I found the title a little misleading as to the tone of the film. I’m not saying it’s shiny and happy and nothing bad happens as in some action flicks, but it really isn’t nearly as dark as it should be. And, I’m disappointed in Jason Statham’s romance subplot. After enough consideration to convince me into writing this paragraph in the first place, I think the problem is not merely that it was disconnected from the rest of the movie and therefore irrelevant. Rather, it’s that he was presented as a secondary main character after Stallone (who had plenty of character development moments with other strong side characters), yet this half-hearted attempt to develop Statham’s character hurts things more than if they had just let him be a sidekick. If neither he nor his plot had existed in the movie, it would have been the same movie. If both had existed without the rest of the film, they could have been the seeds of a completely different (and maybe stronger) alternate film. But crammed together, it made an otherwise generic movie with several interesting characters worse. And that is sad.

After.Life

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Last night, I made a mad dash out of work to the one of three theaters in the area that had a late enough showing of After.Life for me to get to it in time. Yes, really, even though I am well aware of just how terrible the name is. Because the concept made up for it, and it’s not like it was a book where I would have to see the text over and over again. And I’m definitely glad I did. Of the two late night horror movies that I see this week, it will almost certainly have been the best, and by a wide margin.

What happens is this: after an unfortunate argument and a brutal car accident, Christina Ricci is trapped between life and death in the basement of a funeral parlor, at the hands (malevolent or beneficial? That is the central question of the plot) of funeral director Liam Neeson; and erstwhile boyfriend The Mac Guy lingers forever around the edges, possibly to lighten the dreamlike quality of the central interactions or possibly to add moderately unneeded melodrama to an otherwise extremely thoughtful film. Because that central plot-driven question is completely beside the point; it is the theme of crossing the veil between life and death that gives the film its real weight. There are certainly hints throughout the opening frames that Ricci is already dead long before any collision occurs, and as each interminable[1] day between death and burial gives way to the next, she looks ever more pale and bloodless and gothic; by the end, she is reminiscent of Wednesday Addams more surely than she has been in years. Despite all these indicators, she clings to her life with a tenacious grip that leaves Neeson ever more exasperated at her unwillingness to accept his assistance in letting go. And that tension between the pull of life and the inevitability of death drives the film along even farther than probably 20 minutes of nudity did[2], much less that potential horror plot I mentioned earlier.

If I may, I think I would like to see more indie horror scripts that explore the same kinds of human questions that are usually relegated to sfnal settings. Thinking man’s horror, if it were to take off, would I’m pretty sure be the first new movie genre I’ve seen in a very, very long time.

[1] To her, that is; despite being slowly paced, nothing ever felt as though it was dragging to me.
[2] Because, yeah, if you can keep me interested in the questions you are raising while Christina Ricci is naked, you’ve probably done a pretty good job with your movie.

The Blind Side

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I have, I am sure, mentioned that I see a lot of Wednesday afternoon movies, in an effort to avoid adding a random 60 miles to my weekly drive schedule. I may also have mentioned that I welcome attendees, because that is a lot of filmage to see by oneself. The upshot is that I will sometimes see something that isn’t at the top of my personal list, or even something I didn’t really want to. In this particular case, the movie I didn’t much wanna see was The Blind Side, by virtue of it being one of those “feel-good picture[s] of the year” that is pretty much guaranteed via that descriptor to be twee and annoying.

But, y’know, I’m a big enough person to admit when I’m wrong, and right here? I was wrong. Through an unlikely (but not unthinkable) series of events, a white Memphis socialite family meets and takes in a black teenaged ward of the state, and they each learn a lot about the ways the world works; also there is football. And it still sounds pretty twee, plus I don’t know how to say only a little bit about it; it’s either keep adding details until I’ve told the whole story, or the probably better option of knowing only that much or even slightly less than what I wrote above, as I did. The important part is, it was a genuinely sweet, sincere movie about how people are only different if we insist that they are, and about whether opportunity can triumph over fate. And no matter how twee this review may be, the movie really wasn’t.

I’m honestly not sure if I’ve ever watched this genre of movie in my adult life without rolling my eyes. I hope I’m reporting accurately, instead of having somehow changed internally to become a sucker. That would be embarrassing.

Shutter Island

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Shutter Island is one of those movies that Hollywood (in the collective, generic sense) manages to abuse badly and thereby annoy me.  The previews have been going for at least six months, with the obligatory gap in the middle when they realize that they don’t know when they’ll release it after all, and hadn’t they better wait and find out? But then, after the gap, right back to the same previews as before. Plus, separately, the previews themselves were horrid and revealed to me everything about the movie.[1] Still, good cast led by a good director and in a beautifully dreary setting means that for the bargain price of a free day-ahead sneak preview, I was more than willing to go see just how it turned out, regardless.

And do you know, there was a period in the middle-to-late section of the movie where they actually had me doubting my preview-based conclusions? Ultimately, I found myself correct all over again, just like I’d known from the start, but despite everything, I did not walk out of the theater pissed, nor even mildly annoyed save at myself for getting briefly suckered. Because, the journey really was the worthier part, this time around. Turns out that, just as with rewatching an old favorite, knowing the outcome doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy the ride. Oh, and speaking of engrossing and well-acted psychological thrillers, I’m nearly positive that I recognized at least two interior sets from the incredible Session 9.

[1] Look, if you know what I mean by this, they’ve probably already done the same to you too. If not, just don’t go looking for it, I guess?

Avatar (2009)

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Avatar has been an interesting phenomenon to me. Because I watch the previews of it, and it of course looks really pretty, plus I know James Cameron makes good sci-fi[1]. But then again, I watch previews of it and it makes me think it will be Dances with Wolves in space.[3] And I didn’t hate that movie the first time, but it grows more awful with each subsequent viewing, and eventually it has retroactively become the moment at which Kevin Costner stopped being a respectable human being actor.

So, after all of that spinning around in my head for a month, I expected it to be pretty, yes, but still mostly terrible. I didn’t see it in the IMAX that the tagline suggests, though it was in 3D. I suppose I’ll get to that before too terribly long, though. Because, IMAX or not, expectations or not, Dances with Wolves and all? It was still really good. (And, yes, very pretty.) And if the message was perhaps bludgeoned in, it is not a message with which I have no sympathy. I guess I should ought to find a hardcore conservative and find out just how much they hated it. But really, even if you are allergic to hippie granola, I think the prettiness of the film will get you past most of the relevantly crunchy scenes.

What impressed me most, though, was the uncanny valley effect. Or, rather, it’s lack. Far short of the giant blue Na’vi people looking just subtly wrong enough to hurt my eye, the time rapidly came when it was the actual actors who started to look slightly wrong, and every scene back among humans had me itching to get back to the part of the movie I cared about. Which, okay, the whole point of Dances with Wolves is to throw off the trappings of the Western World, so it makes sense this movie would want me to be there. But when he can manage it even on a physical CGI level? Kudos, Mr. Cameron. I daresay you deserved the full theater and applause you got on even this third weekend of theatrical release.

[1] Seriously, that’s kind of his Thing, blips on the radar like Titanic[2] notwithstanding.
[2] Hey, now there’s a piece of irony.
[3] And then I watch South Park, and they point out that in fact it will be Dances with Smurfs, and Giovanni Ribisi will be an unobtanium-hungry Gargamel, but really that’s still Dances with Wolves.

2012

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So, the Mayans, right? I’ve been keeping an eye on this calendar thing since way before it got trendy. That said, I’m glad it got trendy, because how else am I supposed to get a gem of a movie like 2012, in which the world is destroyed non-stop for two and a half hours? In case you have managed to miss the media blitz, it goes like this. The Mayans had this calendar that predicted star movements, eclipses, pretty much everything going on with the earth’s interactions with the rest of the solar system and possibly galaxy. And this calendar has been around for thousands of years, constantly being right. But, as of the winter solstice, 2012, the calendar just ends. I guess the present day Maya people, of whom there are not many, say it’s this thing like the end of an age, and a new age will start afterward? But it was quickly appropriated[1] as the predictive date of the end of the world. After all, if the world doesn’t end, where did all of our eclipses and tides go, Mayans? Either keep predicting, or give us our orgiastic apocalypse fantasies![2]

I should ought to point out that the world does not immediately begin ending once the credits have concluded; in fact, the film opens in 2009, because someone decided we needed a scientific reason for the inevitable carnage. Please note that we were not provided with a scientific reason, at all, but, you know how these things go. All the same, Roland Emmerich clearly understood that his audience would not be pleased by the lack of instant carnage, because the evidence montage was suffused with rapid tension music from the orchestra pit. Then, after a brief pause to introduce John Cusack, the rest of the film actually was the non-stop destructive roller coaster I had jokingly promised my double-dates for the evening. I’m not even kidding; if there was a scene after the 30 minute mark that did not include either an explosion, a tidal wave, an earthquake, flowing lava or (at the bare minimum) floating ash, I genuinely don’t remember it. And every time the film thought about being emotionally serious or speaking intelligently on the loss of worldwide culture or the death of an entire sentient species, Roland’s steady hand was there on the script to pull back from that brink and resume the carnival-of-the-ridiculous the film was clearly meant to be.

The only problem I had, the only problem, was with the audience. Because except for me and my dates, there was nobody laughing every two to five minutes at the newest bit of over-the-top parody of disaster film that I’m positive Emmerich intended to make. I’m pretty sure nobody else laughed the entire time! The director clearly got it. The sprawling cast of Hollywood notables appeared to get it. I certainly got it. Why didn’t they?

[1] Probably by The Man.
[2] Actual orgies, while likely, are not necessarily included. This was meant to be more in the metaphorical doomsday-excitement sense.

Dead Like Me: Life after Death

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One upon a time, there was a television show in which the always enjoyable Mandy Patinkin (as Rube) wrangled a group of grim reapers, those randomly selected dead who remain alive to harvest the souls of the living as part of the cycle of life and death. Think the personification of Death, if it were a worldwide non-profit business organization instead of one guy in a robe, or perhaps girl wearing an ankh and black casualwear. Anyhow, Mandy was the district manager for this group of people assigned to handle accidental deaths in the Pacific Northwest, and the series opens on one such death of a teenage girl and focuses on, in addition to the reaping, Georgia Lass’s slow process of moving on with her life after death, and on her family’s slow process of coming to terms with their dead daughter. It was a good, funny, occasionally moving show.

In the curse of time, it was canceled, as tends to happen. And then, unexpectedly, a direct-to-video movie was made. Life after Death covers a couple of plotlines, one following Rube’s replacement as the regional boss and one following George’s assignment to reap a teenage boy who happens to be her sister’s boyfriend. The second plotline was everything that I would look for from the show when it was on, funny and moving all wrapped up in one well-written package. The first one, on the other hand, was meaningless from start to finish. There was no good explanation for or resolution of Rube’s disappearance. The remaining side characters all ditched their past motivations, in ways that are slightly believable, but only if I fill in the gaps for myself; the script did not explain adequately. And the resolution felt episodic rather than like its own story; that is, the situation at the end of the story was exactly the same as it had been at the beginning. Which I assume was an effort to leave a space for Mandy to return if another movie is made, because his absence was a glaring hole. But it still made what was half of a good movie turn into half of a good episode and half of a terrible one. The idea of a film doesn’t offend me, but if it’s only going to be a long episode, they should bring the series back instead. And write it the better way it used to be written!

Funny People

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As I mentioned quite recently, I’ve never seen a full-on Judd Apatow movie. Well, had never, at least. But, last night I caught Funny People. I can say without reservation that the movie had a significant number of funny people in it. Despite that, I’m pretty sure the goal of the title was irony. Because, as funny as it was, both in the stand-up segments and the main story segments, the bulk of the movie showed people wronging themselves and each other in ways both blunt and subtle, and only sporadically taking away hard lessons on how to be better. I think it had to be a comedy, not because Apatow and Seth Rogen and Adam Sandler are known for comedy, but because if you remove the regular doses of humor, Funny People would be slit-your-wrists cinema.

Rogen stars as his increasingly common, and increasingly likeable, schlubby everyman, this time an aspiring comedian trying and mostly failing to work his way into the Hollywood scene. His life changes dramatically when his set follows that of a famous comedian, played by Sandler, who has just learned he is probably going to die of [let’s say] Robert Jordan’s Disease and then flubs his first public stand-up routine in years, due to his dark mood. Rogen takes advantage of the situation to get some fairly cheap laughs at Sandler’s expense, whereupon the comedian decides to hire Rogen as a writer and assistant, and most importantly, as the sole bearer of the knowledge of Sandler’s illness and probable death. Occasional digressions into Rogen’s personal life are interesting from a character development perspective but mostly serve to remove focus from the chemistry between the old and young comedians, their growing friendship, and the lessons that each is taking from the other. And then, as the previews made perfectly clear, Sandler’s disease goes into unexpected remission, and he decides to embrace the second chance he has been given in pretty much the worst ways imaginable, while Rogen is left the impossible task of damage control.

It really is a very funny movie. I said that and I meant it. And a lot of the time, it’s funny like things that are funny, and that’s pretty sweet. But sometimes, it’s funny like watching a crash between a car full of clowns and a limo full of midgets, which crash has happened in full view of the Special Ed bus. You can’t look away and you know you’re going to hell, and there’s a voice inside you desperately trying to convince you that those kids are going to have nightmares for months, that midgets are totally people, and that clowns… well, okay, the clowns are probably better off. But you still choke out laughter, because you can’t not. That kind of funny, is, y’know, probably less good in large doses.