Tag Archives: drama

Adventureland

Have you noticed how practically everything that’s going on in Hollywood in the past three or four years isn’t more than a degree of separation from Freaks and Geeks? Which was a short-lived NBC coming of age drama, in case you entirely failed to be aware of it. But then I doubt you’d have noticed this new thing. I’ll tell you who has, though: Terry Gross, that chick from Fresh Air.

The latest such endeavour connected to a failed-but-brilliant decade-old high school show is Adventureland, a nearly perfect fusion of coming of age drama and romantic comedy in which a kid whose failure to be Michael Cera I could only rarely get past loses his chance to explore Europe and find himself in the summer of 1987 between college and grad school, when his father runs into an economic downturn. Instead, he comes home to Pittsburgh and takes a job at the local amusement park. Hijinks as well as self-finding ensue.

There are two things that make the movie better than it has any right to be. The first and more universally applicable is that the characters are so fully realized. Lots of them are annoying as all get out, but even the ones for whom the audience feels little or no sympathy are still completely believable, with nary a caricature to be found. And the main characters are as flawed, sympathetic, and nuanced as you could really ask for. (Particularly Ryan Reynolds’ lothario of a maintenance man, who could easily have been one-dimensional with little to no quality drop-off for the film.) And the second thing is that the female lead hits all of my buttons for The Right Girl.[1] I know a movie can only give a cursory character study at best, but, yeah.

If you’re wondering why I’m leaving the Not Michael Cera guy out of this review? It’s mostly because I don’t want to spoil the experience of him.

[1] Also, I am not alone in this assessment, though this is not the first time Ryan and I have agreed on such things.

JCVD

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And then, towards the tail end of the weekend, I headed back to the Angelika[1] to watch another movie chock full of subtitles, JCVD. So there’s this guy, Jean-Claude Van Damme, right? Martial arts movie star from the late ’80s and throughout the ’90s but who has been somewhat less popular of late. And he has kind of a sad life; sure, the Belgians back home all adore him, but he’s losing custody of his daughter and his attempts to revive his career are frustrated at every turn, most recently by Steven Seagal’s willingness to ditch his ponytail in pursuit of a role.

And then, on a perfectly normal day, J.C.[2] runs into the post office on an errand and finds himself locked into a twisted hostage crisis whose events are told several times in parallel, with a little bit more information about the truth of the matter revealed each time. What action there is follows the gritty cop drama formula more closely than the fantasy action you’d expect out of one of his movies, and there’s a substantial amount of comedy along the way. But underneath all that lies a serious examination of celebrity and the many ways that people interact with it that would never have happened if it had been a different man trapped in the post office with the rest of the hostages and criminals. The police and negotiators, the hostages, the criminals, the witnesses to events immediately preceding the crisis, the crowd outside, each brings a spin, and in each case only because they recognize that guy from some movies they saw a few years ago.

Which is kind of the point. Not to judge any particular reaction, but to make us aware of how profoundly differently we do react to our celebrities. Hell, it even happened to me. Knowing full well what point the movie was making, I was still frustrated once or twice that Van Damme didn’t take one of the opportunities to fight back against the armed men, take control of the situation when he was one on one. Intellectually, who cares how good he is at karate? He’s still a middle-aged man with a gun being held on him, and he’s allowed to be scared and not want to be any more involved than he must. But I was still rolling my eyes at him because of my own expectations abut his abilities. All of which to say, it’s cool when something can make you laugh and think both. Plus, there really aren’t enough films in the tragicomic category, and it’s always nice to see one more.

[1] In both cases, there was only this one theater showing each movie within at least thirty, and probably more like hundreds of, miles.
[2] This is probably the only movie I can think of where the lead character having these initials is not a sly reference to a messiah; and then again, the case could be made…

Låt den rätte komma in

This weekend, it has been all about the subtitles. After rolling out of work a little early on Wednesday, I fought traffic and a driving blizzard to get to the Angelika in time for Let the Right One In. Plausibly, there was no snow of any kind until the movie started; it’s hard to remember? In any event, there was plenty of snow to be had from the moment the credits rolled. And not just because the movie was set in Sweden, which presumedly is not locked in winter ice twelve months of the year.

Oskar is a bullied 12 year old boy and child of divorce, alone in his apartment most of the time, wishing for the courage to stop his oppressors, and already visibly embittering at his inability to do it. Into that unchanging snowscape arrives a man and a young girl, Eli, who have moved in next door. While Eli and Oskar begin to learn about each other and fumble toward friendship, the man is wandering the woods with his serial-killing kit, draining blood from his victims. Oskar’s new friend will turn out to be far more than she seems, and Oskar’s wishes may not be the boons he had always assumed they would. But then again, maybe they’ll be exactly what he wanted.

It was a very quiet movie, light on dialogue in most of the scenes, and I almost think that the ubiquitous snow and cold were characters in their own rights. Symbolically, I mean, as emblems of that quiet, and of the inner coldness of so many of the characters. There was a lot of beauty in that austere trackless white and cold, and, despite everything, in Eli as well. I said to Nicole that the movie was beautiful and tragic, and it was tragic; but it strikes me that it could have been merely tawdry and pitiful without that abundance of austere beauty. I think this marks the first time that I could see why someone would actively buy into that whole vampire obsession that’s so solidly in vogue these days. I’m not sure if it was the cinematography, the acting, or the script, but Eli was downright magnetic in every frame of film, no matter how innocent or brutal the scene.

It’s hard to really explain why I’m still so drawn in by the memory of the movie without going spoiler all over the place. But my estimation of it has only gone upward in the subsequent days, and I’d run off to watch it again upon pretty much anyone’s request. I really am impressed.

Traitor

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So, it’s been too long since I saw this movie, plus also I’m tired of being behind on reviews and also also I am semi-limited in time to type right now? So quick and dirty is what you get. Which is kind of the opposite of the movie itself, in that the plot was gradual and thoughtful in the majority of possible ways. I’d been kind of expecting an actiony movie from the previews, but it was still quite good even despite the breaking of expectations.

The always excellent Don Cheadle portrays an arms dealer and devout Muslim caught up in a raid on an alleged terrorist camp, who is then left with few choices but to join his fortunes to a different, more committed terrorist group as they plan to carry out a reasonably devastating attack on U.S. soil. Only, of course, there is more going on than that. Like I said above, though, the upside to the movie is how thoughtful it is. There are bad guys, but probably a lot fewer than you might think from the plot description. And the primary theme, unsurprisingly, is betrayal. Which makes it a fairly bleak movie, yes, but quite good for all of that. I doubt it’s in the theaters anymore? But you might want to catch it on DVD at least. Like I said: Don Cheadle? Always excellent.

Y: The Last Man – Whys and Wherefores

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As promised, I’ve finished Y. Whys and Wherefores felt very much like the last volume that it was, from start to finish. Although there are certainly plot elements left to resolve (not least among them Yorick’s years-long quest to reunite with his girlfriend, Beth), the primary purpose of the book was clearly the tying up of loose ends and general denouement, which is appropriate after a series this long. It worked just as you’d expect, structurally.

What I’ve been trying to decide since I read it (and in the handful of hours I spent staring at the mostly blank screen after I wrote the first sentence this morning) is how I felt about the ending from a purely story-driven perspective. And of course, spoilers mean not being allowed to really go into details, nor even wanting to. Whatever else it was, it was a powerful finish. Which I guess answers my question pretty well all by itself. It’s also a very thoughtful finish. I’m not sure if introspective is the right word to apply to static history imprinted onto dead trees, but even if I cannot apply it to the book, it certainly applies to my mood after the fact.

Shakespeare has been on my mind all along, of course, and well on purpose. I’ll have to reread these someday as a single unit while watching for Shakespeare in general, all English-majory and analytical, but my point right now is that it has occurred to me, with surprising belatedness, that Yorick certainly qualifies for the descriptor of a fellow of infinite jest, which is good: played differently, The Last Man‘s potential for unrelenting grimness would have overwhelmed any other possible message. In retrospect, I’m starting to think that the Walking Dead series might suffer from a terminal case of the same disease.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

mv5bmtyzodgzmjaym15bml5banbnxkftztcwmti3nzi2mq-_v1_After finishing the first Lucifer volume, I started reading Dzur, which is nice because I haven’t read a Vlad Taltos book in years. Both of these events (the finishing and the starting) occurred while in line to see a sneak preview of a movie coming out next month, Forgetting Sarah Marshall. After getting a couple of chapters into the book, the movie started. And then I left it behind in the theater, not to be discovered in the Lost and Found this morning as I had hoped. None of which would be particularly relevant, except that the last time I lost a book in a theater, it was Brokedown Palace by the same author and set in the same universe. I’m assuming there’s a lesson in that, somewhere. But mostly it means that when I review the new Star Wars book I’m currently reading instead, it will suffer by already not being nearly as good as Dzur was. Dammit.

But anyway, there was also this movie, right? Marshall from How I Met Your Mother is a composer who’s dating actress Veronica Mars (and writing the incidental music for her cop drama TV show), but then after several shots of his cock taking up the majority of the early-movie screen time, they break up because she’s cheating on him with some British rock star. After weeks of misery, he goes to Hawaii for a vacation, only to discover that Veronica and her new rocker boyfriend are staying at the resort. Also, Jackie from the 70’s Show is one of the hotel staff, and she has her eye on Marshall, who I should probably be referring to in some other way to avoid confusion with the film’s title. (Veronica Mars is Sarah Marshall, incidentally.) In any event, hilarity ensues, and there is a pretty great supporting cast to help the hilarity along its way. Also written by Marshall, aka Jason Segel, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is consistently funny across several genres of humor. The writing is a little looser than it could be, with a couple of characters seeming to serve no plot purpose at all, but the laughs make up for a lot.

And what they don’t cover is handled deftly by the film’s soft, gooey center. Three out of the four major characters are achingly human in between the laughs, trying to make their best of a horrible situation that we’ve probably all experienced at some point, a situation in which there is plenty of blame to share around to all parties. But, I mean, don’t go see it because of the romance and drama. Go see it because it’s pretty hilarious, and then just be pleased by the perks.[1]

[1] To sum up, these were a surprisingly realistic and adult portrayal of a rocky break-up, Kristen Bell on constant bikini display, and Marshall-cock.

Juno

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mv5bmtiwmdgwodc5nl5bml5banbnxkftztywmjqzmdm4-_v1_In keeping with a longstanding Shards of Delirium tradition of only watching movies in alphabetical order[1], when I finally made it back to a theater yesterday, I saw Juno. It was exactly the sort of slice-of-life plot outline that traditionally keeps me well away from the theater, right down to the overly twee tagline[2]. And yet there was something about the previews and later the overwhelmingly positive reviews that said to me, “this one, this one you should go and see anyway.” Then, after finally getting around to seeing Jumper (alphabetical order, remember?), I did!

Juno MacGuff, possessed of the life-slice in question, is a junior in high school with rock & roll aspirations, delightful taste in Dario Argento films, smart-ass sensibilities… and a fetus. This last part and more specifically her choices about it, falling rather more outside society’s accepted norm than her other qualities, is the driving force behind the film’s plot. Despite being a sweet and funny (and at one point jarringly melodramatic) story, I don’t think there would have been quite enough there to really draw me in. (Slice-of-life = ew, on average; always has, probably always will.) But the acting! The acting was fantastic. Every supporting character[3] added real depth to Juno’s story, Michael Cera was his usually sweet, bumbling perfection, and Ellen Page… Every so often, you get to catch a movie right at the beginning of someone’s career and realize there’s a good chance that this actor is going to be something special. Kate Winslet in Heavenly Creatures, or Natalie Portman in The Professional. Ellen Page’s turn as Hayley in Hard Candy was another such watershed moment for me, and the only surprise behind her outstanding job as Juno yesterday is that the mainstream recognition is coming so soon. Mark my words, she’ll be even better in five or ten more years.

[1] Discussion topic: when did you first notice that habit? Don’t be shy! You might be surprised by everyone else’s answer!
[2] In case you were unaware, the tagline has been provided practically forever in the mouseover text of the movie’s title link. And eventually, even all of the archives will have this feature, after which some portion of this footnote’s truth value will be purely of historical interest.
[3] Well, okay, not so much Juno’s friend or Juno’s babydaddy’s friend. But two out of a dozen or so is an acceptable loss ratio, I say!

Cloverfield

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Then, earlier this week I saw Cloverfield, which will mean that I’m finally caught up. So that’s awesome. As for the awesomeness of the movie… well, it turns out it wasn’t really that kind of movie, and I think that’s what made it work so well. When you see Independence Day or Godzilla, to name a couple of other times New York has been destroyed, the focus of the film is on the people who are out there saving the day, and they’re big and heroic (or occasionally dorky and heroic) and the movie is about them saving the day. Cloverfield, contrariwise, is about us. Any of the regular people who, when New York starts falling apart around them, are basically fucked. And they know they are, but the thing about being human is you still do everything in your power to survive, even when there’s no hope. And sometimes there are still amazing feats and there are still small moments of heroism, and that’s okay because another thing about being human is that every so often you surpass your limits.

I’m going to leave plot out of it, I think, because except for that something is attacking New York and there’s a dude who has a video camera[1], you don’t really need to know anything else and it might take away from the impact. And, okay, there’s the Blair Witch comparison: sure enough, if you have motion-sickness problems, this will probably not be the movie for you. People have to run a lot, which makes for shaky camerawork. But if you can get past that, the rest of the film is equal parts cool / scary things happening amid explosions and gripping human drama, or occasionally melodrama. But let’s be honest, that’s just as real a part of the human experience as the rest of it. Plus it subscribes to the first rule of drive-in cinema: anyone can die, at any moment.[2]

[1] And pretty much everyone who has seen a movie preview somewhere in the past six months knows this much already.
[2] There are just so very many reasons I liked this movie.

V for Vendetta

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I really liked that movie, V for Vendetta. It had Hugo Weaving and moving stories of humanity and some explosions and an important political allegory. Therefore, why not read the graphic novel upon which it is based? I’ve been doing a lot of that anyway, and it is one of the classics of the modern age, and anyway, they can’t all be serialized. Plus, adding to my knowledge of the overall field is cool, because then I get to giggle over things like the reference to Preacher in the last Y I read a few weeks ago.

To those various ends, I did read it. Which, maybe pretty obvious already, I guess. Anyhow, it was good. In the not-so-distant future, England has survived a holocaust that has left most of the rest of the world reeling. And to survive the aftermath and ensure that England prevails, a totalitarian regime has emerged. Was it inevitable, or even necessary? That’s a matter of argument, but in any event some of the actions it took in those early days clearly were unnecessary, and there’s one man who is ready for the regime to crumble and restore the power to where it belongs, in the hands of the governed. He has no name, but he has got a codename, V, and a Guy Fawkes mask, and some pretty sharp knives. And an impressive knowledge of explosives and the inner workings of the evil empire. And he’s got a pupil, Evey Hammond. Mostly, though, he’s got a vendetta. Because some of those unnecessary actions were performed on him.

There were differences of course. Mostly in the order of the story, but also via a few characters changed, added, or left out. For the most part, I ended up preferring the movie, which is probably a matter of blasphemy to some people somewhere. But the pacing was better, the message was just a little bit less scattered, and there were a couple of aspects that wouldn’t have affected me as deeply with still images. I did miss the written-out character of the party bigwig’s wife who loses all of her social support with the death of her husband and has to find a way to live in the world he helped to create. On the other hand, the Leader was mostly unimpressive in the book, which I didn’t like at all. It’s hard for me to credit that people will give up all of their freedom in the name of fear alone. Charisma has to play a part too, in my largely uninformed reading of history.

Lastly, there’s a message in the book that may have been in the movie as well, but I never saw it if so: that governments are inherently negative, and people should live in order without any guidance from leaders at all. Well, okay, I take that back. Should is a pretty strong word, and I think I agree with that as written. But unlike V, I don’t believe that people will do so, and that some amount of governance is therefore imperative. But I’m with him on how that line should be drawn much closer to the individual than it currently is, and especially than it has been at certain points in our history and probably will be again at certain points in our future.

Shooter

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As winter ebbs into spring, so too do a young man’s fancies turn from horror movies to action movies. (Okay, that’s just not true, I could watch a new horror movie every day and, save for the effort of reviewing everything, not get tired of it. But that is kind of the cycle that Hollywood thrusts upon us on average, and so here we are.) Anyway, the first action movie of the season that I’ve noticed is Shooter, in which Mark Wahlberg [SPOILER ALERT!!!] shoots people. See? Totally an action movie.

Of course, I was nearly derailed right at the beginning, when our hero’s military partner was named Donnie. But I recovered from that bit of amusement (luckily, there were no Dirks) and settled into a pretty engrossing action drama. See, this sniper guy has retired from the military because of a difference of opinion between him and a commanding officer about whether he should have been left behind without support during an illegal incursion into another country. (He was against it, you see.) So now that he’s living the quiet isolationist mountain lifestyle with a lot of guns and a dog and no human contact, Danny Glover decides that he actually has gotten too old for this shit, and it’s time to contract out saving the President’s life to someone else. See, some other awesome sniper is about to assassinate our gunnery seargent’s estranged commander in chief, and only an equally awesome sniper can figure out how he’ll do it, so they can stop him. Except, Danny was always lying about that age thing, and is instead a bad guy setting up someone to take the fall after the assassination. Luckily, Marky Mark somehow manages to survive the first fifteen minutes and then enlists the help of a hot red-headed chick and an idealistic FBI agent to trace down the conspiracy and get his life back.

Except, he finds out that it goes All The Way To The Top! (No, not really. The President is not targetting himself. I promise.) Anyway, there’s lots of fugitive-y stuff, a fair amount of wargames and shooting, the occasional sniping, a helicopter explosion worthy of having been accomplished by James Bond, and also cool conspiracy elements like I mentioned previously. My only complaint is that I liked the dark ambiguous ending to the film that occurred about seven minutes before the actual ending better than the one that preceded the credits. But the explosion and the hot redhead make up for that, so.