When it comes to a show like David Milch's Deadwood, one can't help but wax a bit philosophical about the state of television these days. I don't mean that as a lament; television is as good as it's ever been, with shows being afforded real budgets, attracting real actors, and more and more acting as a destination for talent as opposed to a launching pad. That's a good thing. Movies are like short stories. A season of television can be like a good novel. It's given room to breathe.
Take a breath of fresh air, then, and wander into Deadwood - today of South Dakota, erstwhile an illegal town settled on Sioux lands after the discovery of what was to become the largest gold rush in history. This is a show not quite like any other I've seen - it's a western, a character-based drama, a study of good and evil, of order and chaos, and of nothing less than the origins of civilization. How did we, as feudal packs of crafty apes, eventually settle into having laws, morals, society? What were the principles involved? These are the questions, I intuit,that David Milch is exploring.
In working with such lofty themes, then, it is something of a wonder that the majority of the characters are based on real historical figures. The main character, if you can say the series has one, is Seth Bullock, as played by Timothy Olyphant. A Montana sheriff, he is tired of that life and heads to Deadwood with his Jewish partner, Sol Star (John Hawkes) to open a hardware store. Upon arriving, he forms a friendship with famed gunfighter and ex-lawman Wild Bill Hickock (Keith Carradine), and comes into conflict with Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), who owns the Gem Saloon, the epicenter of the town, and is the de facto boss of Deadwood by virtue of being the smartest and biggest asshole in the bunch. Other characters include Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie), a longtime friend of Hickock's, Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert), who loves Bill Hickock but is a hopeless drunk, Dan Dority (W. Earl Brown), a henchman of Swearengen's, Doc Cochran (a fantastic Brad Dourif), wracked by mental scars of the Civil War, E.B. Farnum (William Sanderson), a the smarmy owner of the local hotel, and Trixie (Paula Malcomson), Swearengen's favorite whore. That is by no means a comprehensive list. This is a big fucking show.
It's the sort of show where you don't really know how where to start talking. I could talk about the plot. About the threads of characters, and how their lives intersect. It doesn't seem to fit, though. Maybe the place to talk about for now is the dialogue. I think you can tell a lot about someone by how they respond to the actual words of this show. The simplistic sorts will be overwhelmed with the sheer volume of vulgarities uttered - the show would become famous for the depths of its profanity - and yet, there's poetry in the filth. Read the following exchange, and picture the words being savored by good actors:
Wild Bill Hickock: "You know the sound of Thunder, Mrs. Garret?"
Alma Garret: "Of course."
Wild Bill: "Can you imagine that sound if I asked you to?"
Alma: "Yes I can, Mr. Hickock."
Wild Bill: "Your husband and me had this talk, and I told him to head home to avoid a dark result. But I didn't say it in thunder. Ma'am, listen to the thunder."
More than any other show I've ever encountered, Deadwood is full of this level of dialogue: Milch has a flair for talking in circles, of composing a sentence from the inside out, of giving his actors the natural flow of Iambic Pentameter. It's been called "Shakespearean" by reviewers more credible than I, and I am not going to be the one to disagree. No point is ever made straight up. Everybody has the eloquence. Everybody has the flow.
The show is fully serial, and the first few episodes simply flesh out the characters. Plot begins to move forward via a rich Eastern dandy named Brom Garret (Timothy Omundson) who has moved into Deadwood, and finds himself in way over his head in dealing with Swearengen over the property rights to a patch of land. His wife Alma (Molly Parker) is lost, at first, in a laudanum stupor, but as the plot progresses takes more of an active role.
The second, and more meaningful plot catalyst is the (and I hope I'm not giving anything away here) murder of Wild Bill Hickock, and the trial that ensues. Looking at the series as a single entity, that's the point where it stops being about the atmosphere of Deadwood and turns more into a show about the fate of a community at whole. In that context, Al Swearengen shifts from plot-necessary antagonist to complex wheeler and dealer who, while he is certainly greedy and ruthless, in the end sees what's best for the community as best for himself. Other, less obvious evils exist, such as in the form of Cy Tolliver (Powers Boothe) who opens a saloon/primitive casino/brothel that's in competition with Swearengen's. His character is hinted out in the lead-up to a smallpox epidemic striking the camp (based off a real historical event), and fully revealed in the fate of a pair of orphaned children who arrive in the town. What happens with them is what drives his primary madam Joanie (Kim Dickens) away, for she is more of the heart-of-gold sort.
In writing about where the series goes, I doubt that I can give off the impression of the sort of things that happen, but hopefully in reading this one can tell what sort of show they're getting into when it comes to something like Deadwood. It's the sort of experience I would definitely say is not for novices - it can be hard to follow and if you're concerned with profanity that is very much in excess, it's not for you. But it's a fascinating exercise in television, and the first season represents a unique marker in showing what a television show can do.
Rating: Four Stars (out of four)
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 22, 2008
There Will be Bood (**)
So what the hell am I to think of There Will be Blood, I ask? Am I to praise it for its craftsmanship, its operatic nature, its captivating performances by hard-working and incomparably talented actors, or am I to slam it for its fundamental flaws? It's a Paul Thomas Anderson movie, which means that it's likely to be dealing with despicable people. That much I figured on going in. What I didn't figure on was the presentation of despicable people as though their despicable nature made them worthwhile viewing.
I suppose I should have. I had the same complaint about Magnolia, which others seem to have enjoyed much more than I did - Roger Ebert, the critic I most respect, recently added it to his "Great Movies" collection. Did I miss the boat? Is there value in this sort of film, which also presents despicable people doing despicable things on lavish sets upon which actors portrayed their characters' despicable acts with considerable verve? Perhaps it asks us to empathize with these characters, or find the humanity inherent in their flaws. The problem wasn't that the characters were flawed, though. It's that they were fundamentally defective. "If I saw that in a movie," Magnolia's narrator described our argument to the coincidences in that movie, "I wouldn't believe it." My response was to think "If I saw any of these characters in a movie that purported to have a villain, I'd say they were empty antagonists, cartoonish to a fault. Why on earth would anyone want to focus a movie around a dozen of them?"
So too is my complaint with There Will be Blood, which shares many of the same tonal characteristics. There are differences in presentation, sure, but the movie struck me in remarkably the same way. Where Magnolia is a mosaic, There Will be Blood is a character study; where Magnolia presented directionless characters whose lives fell into chaos, There Will be Blood presents a man essentially defined by his ambition and drive but with no moral compass whatsoever; where Magnolia presented its religion in mostly hidden symbols before its gob-smackingly off-the-wall finale, There Will be Blood presents it as an institution of people at odds with our supposed protagonist.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. In the movie I'm supposed to be reviewing here, Daniel-Day Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, and Daniel Plainview is a thorough, unrepentant son of a bitch. We first meet him digging for silver in a Texas hole. He finds some, but cruelly breaks his leg, drags himself out of the hole and miles away, we gather. This is disconnected from the rest of the film both in plot and character; I get the feeling I know what p.t.a. was trying to set up here, but it just doesn't fucking work. Start at the character's personal low point, show what drives him, blah blah blah. When we next meet him he's prospecting for oil, or more properly, attempting to persuade people to sell or lease him land upon which to set up wells.
A teenage boy finds him and tells him he believes there is oil on his father's land, near his tiny Texas town. This tip is given to him by Paul Sunday (played by Paul Dano). Paul's brother Eli becomes a figure in their local church. The church is of the crazier persuasion. Speaking in tongues. Sarah Palin shit. I should also mention that Eli is also played by Paul Dano, and let me tell you here and now that that was pretty fucking confusing for a time.
Most of the movie consists of Plainview drilling on the Texas land and trying to keep the religious wackos off his back. If that doesn't sound very interesting, it's not. He has a habit of making false promises, such as donating $5,000 to building a new church, or allowing Eli to bless the well before they start drilling. When a man is killed in the drilling, Eli says "This could have been prevented." Right. By the blessing. We know we're not supposed to like the church people, because Eli's youngest sister says to Daniel's son H.W. (to us) early that if her father beats her if she doesn't pray. And of course we can't like Plainview, whose son he uses as a prop and who, after going deaf in an accident, he finds not useful to him anymore and sends away.
Plainview bought up most of the property around this town, but there was a holdout. No matter, Plainview explains in his most condescending tone (which is saying something): seepage has insured that the oil that was under his land is in his possession anyway. But Plainview needs to build a pipeline, and needs to go through the holdout's land. The holdout tells him it's no problem, so long as he converts. Ah, Christians.
Plainview agrees. I am told by the dick-sucking sycophant that wrote the IMDB synopsis that the conversion is "hilariously false." Hilariously? People of that persuasion - which the effetes that write plot summaries for IMDB may not be aware actually exist in enormous numbers in places where they don't live, but who offer the best scientific explanation for the election and re-election of George W. Bush - will be sickened by the falseness of the conversion, while people not of the persuasion should be sickened by the conversion itself. To what purpose is the scene in the movie? To show that Plainview will stoop to any charade in order to make his money. You know, the same point that the movie has been banging us over the fucking head with for the last two and a half fucking hours.
The last scene of There Will be Blood is memorable, at least. I'll give it that much. Far be it for me to decry any scene where a man is beaten to death with a vintage bowling pin.
I dunno. My problem, as I think about it, becomes less specific to There Will be Blood and more general to its creator. I have nothing against Paul Thomas Anderson personally, but I guess I'm just more of the Kevin Smith school (Kevin Smith once famously ranted against Magnolia on his message board: "They sent me an Academy screener DVD this week. I'll never watch it again, but I will keep it. I'll keep it right on my desk, as a constant reminder that a bloated sense of self-importance is the most unattractive quality in a person or their work." - so take that for what it is). Anderson knows how to make a nice-looking movie, he's good with steadicams, he inspires good performances, and at time he seems almost channeling Scorcese or Kubrick, but I've never been given evidence that he knows what a movie should be. He reminds me of the great George Carlin's description of white people playing the blues. "It ain't enough to know which notes to play, you gotta know why they need to be played." He doesn't.
There Will be Blood has been described by some fellators as comparable to Citizen Kane. I've seen Citizen Kane. It's not. I understand that Anderson dropped out of NYU's film school, presumably because he felt there was nothing they could teach him. Maybe he should have stayed long enough to get to the point where they write in bold all-caps letters across the chalkboard, "WHY THE FUCK SHOULD I CARE?"
Rating: 2 stars (out of 4).
Currently plowing through Deadwood: Season 1 at an alarming rate.
I suppose I should have. I had the same complaint about Magnolia, which others seem to have enjoyed much more than I did - Roger Ebert, the critic I most respect, recently added it to his "Great Movies" collection. Did I miss the boat? Is there value in this sort of film, which also presents despicable people doing despicable things on lavish sets upon which actors portrayed their characters' despicable acts with considerable verve? Perhaps it asks us to empathize with these characters, or find the humanity inherent in their flaws. The problem wasn't that the characters were flawed, though. It's that they were fundamentally defective. "If I saw that in a movie," Magnolia's narrator described our argument to the coincidences in that movie, "I wouldn't believe it." My response was to think "If I saw any of these characters in a movie that purported to have a villain, I'd say they were empty antagonists, cartoonish to a fault. Why on earth would anyone want to focus a movie around a dozen of them?"
So too is my complaint with There Will be Blood, which shares many of the same tonal characteristics. There are differences in presentation, sure, but the movie struck me in remarkably the same way. Where Magnolia is a mosaic, There Will be Blood is a character study; where Magnolia presented directionless characters whose lives fell into chaos, There Will be Blood presents a man essentially defined by his ambition and drive but with no moral compass whatsoever; where Magnolia presented its religion in mostly hidden symbols before its gob-smackingly off-the-wall finale, There Will be Blood presents it as an institution of people at odds with our supposed protagonist.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. In the movie I'm supposed to be reviewing here, Daniel-Day Lewis plays Daniel Plainview, and Daniel Plainview is a thorough, unrepentant son of a bitch. We first meet him digging for silver in a Texas hole. He finds some, but cruelly breaks his leg, drags himself out of the hole and miles away, we gather. This is disconnected from the rest of the film both in plot and character; I get the feeling I know what p.t.a. was trying to set up here, but it just doesn't fucking work. Start at the character's personal low point, show what drives him, blah blah blah. When we next meet him he's prospecting for oil, or more properly, attempting to persuade people to sell or lease him land upon which to set up wells.
A teenage boy finds him and tells him he believes there is oil on his father's land, near his tiny Texas town. This tip is given to him by Paul Sunday (played by Paul Dano). Paul's brother Eli becomes a figure in their local church. The church is of the crazier persuasion. Speaking in tongues. Sarah Palin shit. I should also mention that Eli is also played by Paul Dano, and let me tell you here and now that that was pretty fucking confusing for a time.
Most of the movie consists of Plainview drilling on the Texas land and trying to keep the religious wackos off his back. If that doesn't sound very interesting, it's not. He has a habit of making false promises, such as donating $5,000 to building a new church, or allowing Eli to bless the well before they start drilling. When a man is killed in the drilling, Eli says "This could have been prevented." Right. By the blessing. We know we're not supposed to like the church people, because Eli's youngest sister says to Daniel's son H.W. (to us) early that if her father beats her if she doesn't pray. And of course we can't like Plainview, whose son he uses as a prop and who, after going deaf in an accident, he finds not useful to him anymore and sends away.
Plainview bought up most of the property around this town, but there was a holdout. No matter, Plainview explains in his most condescending tone (which is saying something): seepage has insured that the oil that was under his land is in his possession anyway. But Plainview needs to build a pipeline, and needs to go through the holdout's land. The holdout tells him it's no problem, so long as he converts. Ah, Christians.
Plainview agrees. I am told by the dick-sucking sycophant that wrote the IMDB synopsis that the conversion is "hilariously false." Hilariously? People of that persuasion - which the effetes that write plot summaries for IMDB may not be aware actually exist in enormous numbers in places where they don't live, but who offer the best scientific explanation for the election and re-election of George W. Bush - will be sickened by the falseness of the conversion, while people not of the persuasion should be sickened by the conversion itself. To what purpose is the scene in the movie? To show that Plainview will stoop to any charade in order to make his money. You know, the same point that the movie has been banging us over the fucking head with for the last two and a half fucking hours.
The last scene of There Will be Blood is memorable, at least. I'll give it that much. Far be it for me to decry any scene where a man is beaten to death with a vintage bowling pin.
I dunno. My problem, as I think about it, becomes less specific to There Will be Blood and more general to its creator. I have nothing against Paul Thomas Anderson personally, but I guess I'm just more of the Kevin Smith school (Kevin Smith once famously ranted against Magnolia on his message board: "They sent me an Academy screener DVD this week. I'll never watch it again, but I will keep it. I'll keep it right on my desk, as a constant reminder that a bloated sense of self-importance is the most unattractive quality in a person or their work." - so take that for what it is). Anderson knows how to make a nice-looking movie, he's good with steadicams, he inspires good performances, and at time he seems almost channeling Scorcese or Kubrick, but I've never been given evidence that he knows what a movie should be. He reminds me of the great George Carlin's description of white people playing the blues. "It ain't enough to know which notes to play, you gotta know why they need to be played." He doesn't.
There Will be Blood has been described by some fellators as comparable to Citizen Kane. I've seen Citizen Kane. It's not. I understand that Anderson dropped out of NYU's film school, presumably because he felt there was nothing they could teach him. Maybe he should have stayed long enough to get to the point where they write in bold all-caps letters across the chalkboard, "WHY THE FUCK SHOULD I CARE?"
Rating: 2 stars (out of 4).
Currently plowing through Deadwood: Season 1 at an alarming rate.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Mulholland Drive (****)
David Lynch's Mulholland Drive is the crown jewel in his quest to make the most confusing fucking movie in history. It is something of a miracle, then, that that movie seems on retrospect, and after only a single viewing, to be almost penetrable. And crushingly good. It's the sort of movie that self-selects its audience. Someone who says "That movie is weird" with a sneer on their face and a disapproving gaze toward anything that doesn't explain itself straight up will really fucking despise this one. This is the sort of movie that makes Being John Malkovich seem like Dodgeball, in terms of its complexity.
Yet, I'm being misplaced in my generosity, I feel. The real trick to Mulholland Drive is not its complexity, or the way it weaves fantasy and reality through the device of the Unreliable Narrator - artsy-fartsy fucks have been playing with that kind of mode for decades - it's the sheer eloquence of it: the fact that you don't really have to understand it to appreciate it, that even if you aren't able to distill the fantasy from the reality, and fully grasp why a character, for instance, appears as a bright-eyed Hollywood newcomer in one scene but later appears to be very different - well, you can still appreciate the way it affects your subconscious, if you were simply to sit back and accept it.
I'm of two minds about this review. Part of me wants to brag. Part of me wants to reveal, for instance, that the plucky-faced heroine of the first four-fifths of the movie, who's even named Betty Elms for Christ's sake, is a bit too pert and innocent to be real in a David Lynch movie, and that that was the clue that tipped me off to the fact that - well, hell, if you want a synopsis as to what in the movie is real and what is fantasy, I'm sure you can find one. Google is your friend. And yet, there's a genius to it - a maniacal way in which halfway through the movie you're convinced it's going to be completely impenetrable and then you reach the end and it all sorts of falls into place.
You've heard that before, I'm sure. Let me assure you it's no simple gag. Bruce Willis isn't dead. It's not an explanation of the plot of the movie, but an explanation of the theme.
I'm not explaining the plot of the movie. How could I? When we first meet Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), she's moving to Hollywood, into her Aunt's apartment while she is off making a movie. She lands auditions. She lands one, but it's for a movie that will never be made; she talks to another director, but he's involved in a plot of his own, where shady behind-the-scene forces in Hollywood are making sure a particular other girl is cast. A woman (Laura Harring) who calls herself Rita - after a poster of Rita Hayworth - shows up in the apartment uninvited. She was in a car crash, saving her at the last minute from a man in the front of her limo, that was going to shoot her. She needs a place to stay. Betty gives it to her.
In time, they become lovers. There's a certain innocence to the way that Betty tells her she doesn't have to sleep on the couch tonight. When they make love, the scenes are erotic in a way most movies these days don't dare to be. I tried to think of the last time I saw a sex scene that wasn't forced, desperate, comic, or a combination of all three. That Laura Harring's character names herself after Rita Hayworth is not a coincidence.
What happens then? I'm not sure I could explain, though I'm fairly certain I understood. I will say that the fact that, for the majority of the movie, the idea that there are vast behind-the-scenes conspiracies aimed at getting other girls into roles that Betty is aiming for seems a likely excuse.
What really happened? I wouldn't dare say. But I will say to pay close attention - not just to the whole movie, though that's important - but to everything that happens after the prolonged, bizarre scene in the theater. There are clues.
Halfway through this movie I thought I was going to hate it. I had quotes in my head. "Completely impenetrable. The juxtaposition of the scenes with the innocent starlet and the behind-the-scenes forces acting on the director are never completely resolved." And they aren't. Also, I would have gotten to use the word "juxtaposition" outside of quotation marks. I still might, some day.
And yet, there's a logic to it. The fucking thing works. It's like Lynch knows just how far to fuck with his audience before he loses them, pushes it just beyond the ledge so as to clear out the rifraff, and then pulls you back. He makes you work for it - but not so hard that you need to be a film student to guess. Stay through to the end, and think about it, and then maybe see it again while the thoughts you came up with were still fresh in your mind. Some of the movie is fantasy. Some is reality. All is exquisite.
Rating: 4 stars (out of 4).
There Will Be Blood should arrive Monday, as should S1D1 and S1D2 of Deadwood
Yet, I'm being misplaced in my generosity, I feel. The real trick to Mulholland Drive is not its complexity, or the way it weaves fantasy and reality through the device of the Unreliable Narrator - artsy-fartsy fucks have been playing with that kind of mode for decades - it's the sheer eloquence of it: the fact that you don't really have to understand it to appreciate it, that even if you aren't able to distill the fantasy from the reality, and fully grasp why a character, for instance, appears as a bright-eyed Hollywood newcomer in one scene but later appears to be very different - well, you can still appreciate the way it affects your subconscious, if you were simply to sit back and accept it.
I'm of two minds about this review. Part of me wants to brag. Part of me wants to reveal, for instance, that the plucky-faced heroine of the first four-fifths of the movie, who's even named Betty Elms for Christ's sake, is a bit too pert and innocent to be real in a David Lynch movie, and that that was the clue that tipped me off to the fact that - well, hell, if you want a synopsis as to what in the movie is real and what is fantasy, I'm sure you can find one. Google is your friend. And yet, there's a genius to it - a maniacal way in which halfway through the movie you're convinced it's going to be completely impenetrable and then you reach the end and it all sorts of falls into place.
You've heard that before, I'm sure. Let me assure you it's no simple gag. Bruce Willis isn't dead. It's not an explanation of the plot of the movie, but an explanation of the theme.
I'm not explaining the plot of the movie. How could I? When we first meet Betty Elms (Naomi Watts), she's moving to Hollywood, into her Aunt's apartment while she is off making a movie. She lands auditions. She lands one, but it's for a movie that will never be made; she talks to another director, but he's involved in a plot of his own, where shady behind-the-scene forces in Hollywood are making sure a particular other girl is cast. A woman (Laura Harring) who calls herself Rita - after a poster of Rita Hayworth - shows up in the apartment uninvited. She was in a car crash, saving her at the last minute from a man in the front of her limo, that was going to shoot her. She needs a place to stay. Betty gives it to her.
In time, they become lovers. There's a certain innocence to the way that Betty tells her she doesn't have to sleep on the couch tonight. When they make love, the scenes are erotic in a way most movies these days don't dare to be. I tried to think of the last time I saw a sex scene that wasn't forced, desperate, comic, or a combination of all three. That Laura Harring's character names herself after Rita Hayworth is not a coincidence.
What happens then? I'm not sure I could explain, though I'm fairly certain I understood. I will say that the fact that, for the majority of the movie, the idea that there are vast behind-the-scenes conspiracies aimed at getting other girls into roles that Betty is aiming for seems a likely excuse.
What really happened? I wouldn't dare say. But I will say to pay close attention - not just to the whole movie, though that's important - but to everything that happens after the prolonged, bizarre scene in the theater. There are clues.
Halfway through this movie I thought I was going to hate it. I had quotes in my head. "Completely impenetrable. The juxtaposition of the scenes with the innocent starlet and the behind-the-scenes forces acting on the director are never completely resolved." And they aren't. Also, I would have gotten to use the word "juxtaposition" outside of quotation marks. I still might, some day.
And yet, there's a logic to it. The fucking thing works. It's like Lynch knows just how far to fuck with his audience before he loses them, pushes it just beyond the ledge so as to clear out the rifraff, and then pulls you back. He makes you work for it - but not so hard that you need to be a film student to guess. Stay through to the end, and think about it, and then maybe see it again while the thoughts you came up with were still fresh in your mind. Some of the movie is fantasy. Some is reality. All is exquisite.
Rating: 4 stars (out of 4).
There Will Be Blood should arrive Monday, as should S1D1 and S1D2 of Deadwood
Friday, December 12, 2008
Forgetting Sarah Marshall (***)
I like that they humanized the singer. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the latest product of the Apatow Empire, is about a Hollywood composer named Peter (Jason Segel) who does the music for a hit CSI knock-off TV show, and who is dating one of the stars of that show, the eponymous Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell). She dumps him, and we learn with Peter that there's another guy in the picture, an insufferably vain pop singer named Aldous Snow (Russel Brand), whose look seems modeled after the late Michael Hutchens of INXS and whose attitude is at once effete and predatory; he's the kind of human being you instinctively dislike, because he reminds you of that gym instructor who only dates married women. In a lesser movie, he would be a twat, and that would be that. In Forgetting Sarah Marshall, there is an astounding scene where he and Peter have a heart-to-heart. Aldous confronts his flaws - he's vain, shallow, hopelessly addicted to women wanting him, and thus terribly unfaithful. And yet, it's funny, because the two guys get each other. Peter was with Sarah for five years. "You deserve a medal" the singer says, "or a holiday, or at least a cuddle from somebody." Peter nods.
What can you say about this movie, really? It's funny. At times very funny, like when a morose Jason Segel, who escapes to Hawaii post-breakup only to find that his ex and the singer are at the same hotel, has a videophone conversation with his brother-in-law (Bill Hader), involving his sister butting herself in and an inquiry as to the source of a pearl necklace. What can I say. I'm twelve. I laughed.
But mostly, I liked that they humanized the singer. It seems symbolic. I think most people get Apatow movies a little wrong. People are quick to come up with trite summaries of what they contain - "a lot of laughs, and a genuine heart; really about male bonding, male friendships". Blah, blah, blah. To me his movies have always been about accepting life as it comes, and finding the humor. The 40-year-old Virgin had it, and Knocked Up for sure, and Superbad perhaps most of all. Here we have Peter, played by Jason Segel, who also wrote the movie, with an honesty that would win him awards if anyone took the movie seriously. You might remember him as the friend of Seth Rogen's in Knocked Up who would hit on anything with a pulse. Here he's a very different character, a morose, overweight loser who clung to his relationship with Sarah for years beyond its natural breaking point, who hates the thought of being alone, and who when he meets Rachel (Mila Kunis, from That 70's Show), likes her so much that he doesn't want to consign her to Rebound Girl status.
Not much happens in the movie, truth be told. I'm finding it hard to keep a coherent review going. I have to admit I wasn't terribly concerned with whether Peter and Rachel got together, though it was obvious that they would from the second we got to the hotel and I said, "Hey, it's that girl from That 70's Show!" And yet that's perfectly okay; it's about the old relationship and not the new, the pain of the breakup even when you realize with every rational part of your brain that you're better off apart. Each of the characters are fully realized, flawed but human. Peter's a bit of a loser, but not completely sedentary. Sarah's a bit of a bitch, but not completely heartless. The singer is insufferable, but perspicacious enough to know how he comes across. Rachel is free-spirited, but gets into a shouting match with an ex boyfriend that leaves us wondering if she might be a little deranged.
That all sounds a little tedious to describe, but seeing characters like this reminds me of how rare they are; it's a trait of Apatow movies, and good comedies in general, that even the most ridiculous of characters seem like people you've met. Nobody in the movie exists for the purpose of the plot. Maybe that's because there's not much of a plot to begin with, but maybe it's also because the movie is built as a ground-up exercise in witnessing how humans interact. We fight, we fume, we sulk, we empathize, and ultimately, if we go about our business the right way, we emerge older and wiser for our troubles. There's a surf instructor character in the movie, played by Paul Rudd, who's probably smoked a joint or twenty too many in his life. "If you get bitten by a shark, you're not just gonna give up surfing, are you?" he asks.
"Yeah, probably", Peter replies. But it's okay. We get what he means.
Rating: 3 out of 4.
Next up: Mulholland Drive
What can you say about this movie, really? It's funny. At times very funny, like when a morose Jason Segel, who escapes to Hawaii post-breakup only to find that his ex and the singer are at the same hotel, has a videophone conversation with his brother-in-law (Bill Hader), involving his sister butting herself in and an inquiry as to the source of a pearl necklace. What can I say. I'm twelve. I laughed.
But mostly, I liked that they humanized the singer. It seems symbolic. I think most people get Apatow movies a little wrong. People are quick to come up with trite summaries of what they contain - "a lot of laughs, and a genuine heart; really about male bonding, male friendships". Blah, blah, blah. To me his movies have always been about accepting life as it comes, and finding the humor. The 40-year-old Virgin had it, and Knocked Up for sure, and Superbad perhaps most of all. Here we have Peter, played by Jason Segel, who also wrote the movie, with an honesty that would win him awards if anyone took the movie seriously. You might remember him as the friend of Seth Rogen's in Knocked Up who would hit on anything with a pulse. Here he's a very different character, a morose, overweight loser who clung to his relationship with Sarah for years beyond its natural breaking point, who hates the thought of being alone, and who when he meets Rachel (Mila Kunis, from That 70's Show), likes her so much that he doesn't want to consign her to Rebound Girl status.
Not much happens in the movie, truth be told. I'm finding it hard to keep a coherent review going. I have to admit I wasn't terribly concerned with whether Peter and Rachel got together, though it was obvious that they would from the second we got to the hotel and I said, "Hey, it's that girl from That 70's Show!" And yet that's perfectly okay; it's about the old relationship and not the new, the pain of the breakup even when you realize with every rational part of your brain that you're better off apart. Each of the characters are fully realized, flawed but human. Peter's a bit of a loser, but not completely sedentary. Sarah's a bit of a bitch, but not completely heartless. The singer is insufferable, but perspicacious enough to know how he comes across. Rachel is free-spirited, but gets into a shouting match with an ex boyfriend that leaves us wondering if she might be a little deranged.
That all sounds a little tedious to describe, but seeing characters like this reminds me of how rare they are; it's a trait of Apatow movies, and good comedies in general, that even the most ridiculous of characters seem like people you've met. Nobody in the movie exists for the purpose of the plot. Maybe that's because there's not much of a plot to begin with, but maybe it's also because the movie is built as a ground-up exercise in witnessing how humans interact. We fight, we fume, we sulk, we empathize, and ultimately, if we go about our business the right way, we emerge older and wiser for our troubles. There's a surf instructor character in the movie, played by Paul Rudd, who's probably smoked a joint or twenty too many in his life. "If you get bitten by a shark, you're not just gonna give up surfing, are you?" he asks.
"Yeah, probably", Peter replies. But it's okay. We get what he means.
Rating: 3 out of 4.
Next up: Mulholland Drive
Iron Man (***1/2)
Jon Favreau's Iron Man is a substantial step in the evolution of the comic book movie. The truth of that statement is evident to me, at least, when as I wrote the words "comic book movie" I cringed a bit. I don't like categorizing movies by their source material alone. We don't refer to The Silence of the Lambs as a "book movie", or The Shawshank Redemption as a "novella movie", or A Few Good Men as a "play movie", and what the hell kind of category would we put Adaptation into, anyway? Part of me wants to say, a movie is a movie is a movie. But then, comic book movies have a different feel, don't they? They are distinctive. It's been said that comics are the mythology of America. The French have their Arthurian legends, the English (in addition to co-opting the French) have Tolkien, we have Batman and Superman and Spider-man.
And Iron Man. As far as comic book IP goes, it's a bit of a tier 2 property - still an integral piece to the Marvel universe, Iron Man doesn't hold the kind of acclaim one finds in a Spider-Man or Batman.
Or Superman. Where that most influential comic book movie attempted to invoke majesty, the new wave of comic book movies - starting with X-Men, I suppose - has had their sights set firmly on "cool". If you told them they were part of American Mythology, they'd laugh at you. Or give a snark.
In that vein, Iron Man is a good example, probably the best I've seen. The cool is unmistakable, from the first frame, where Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), a genius defense contractor demonstrating his latest weaponry in Afghanistan, exchanges some banter with his escort troops ("Good God," he says when the driver speaks, "I had no idea you were a woman.") In most movies involving characters whose lines must be concentrated into tiny bubbles inside condensed panels, their dialogue comes across much the same way. Here, where Downey Jr. is allowed to ramble and digress (and nobody can do so like Downey Jr. can), we realize that this may be the first truly intelligent superhero movie - or at the very least, the first superhero movie where we would recognize that someone is a genius without having to be told.
Things go bad in Afghanistan, and the plot begins to unfold, involving Stark, who has a crisis of conscience in learning that his weapons may have fallen into the wrong hands; his business partner Obidiah Stone (Jeff Bridges, with a thick beard and shaved head), who worries that Stark's antics and eccentricity may drive their company under; his assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), who is spectacularly competent, who matches him witticism for witticism, who may be in love with him but who is also concerned that his antics could get him killed; Rhodey (Terrence Howard), a friend in the military; and agents of a mysterious government agency known as the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (S.H.I.E.L.D.).
The plot unfolds via - and boy, how am I ever going to get through this part - an ambush on Stark in Afganistan, where a warlord named Raza (Faran Tahir) takes him captive with the intent of forcing him to build his latest weaponry for him. Rather than oblige him, Stark, with the help of a friendly co-captive Yinsen (Shaun Toub), builds a device to help him escape: an early version of what will become his Iron Man suit. He escapes, and fearful that his company has sold weapons to the enemy, announces that they are shutting down their weapons manufacturing division, a move of which Obidiah Stone does not approve. Stark upgrades his Iron Man suit, allowing him to fly, evade a pair of F-22's, and take care of the problems in Afghanistan almost as an afterthought. But Stone gets wind of the device, builds his own version, and problems ensue. Oh, and Stark was wounded in the chest, with shrapnel near to his heart, requiring that an electromagnet stays powered in his chest at all times, lest he die.
If that sounds complicated, well, it is, but events unfold with a certain diabolical logic that leaves you grinning. It's Downey's performance that drives the movie, and his flawed, rambling, womanizing, brilliant character, but the supporting cast is essential, particularly Bridges as the business partner who will become the movie's villain, but who seems less "super" than the supervillains in most superhero movies, in that his goal is nothing more than the salvaging of his company, which he believes Stark is undermining. He's ruthless and cunning, but we can empathize with him, to a degree. Paltrow, as Potts, the assistant, is effortless, but game. We believe that she is aware of the tension between them, but mature enough to stay realistic about these things. Howard plays it completely straight, which is the right decision. Leslie Bibb has a nice role as a reporter with almost as much brainpower as sex appeal.
The special effects are noteworthy - we expect our special effects in high budged superhero movies to be good, but "expensive" and "skillful" are not always the same thing, and even as we have guys in big flying iron suits fighting one another, we sense the personalities behind them, and their mass and momentum. We may not believe them, but to what degree we can we accept them.
I would say that we're approaching a point where when we think of a movie like "Iron Man" we think more of the movie and less of the source material. We're not there yet, but it feels like we should be. This is a quality flick on any curve.
Rating: 3.5 out of 4.
Still to be reviewed: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Mulholland Drive. Shipped: There Will Be Blood, Deadwood S1D1, Deadwood S1D2.
And Iron Man. As far as comic book IP goes, it's a bit of a tier 2 property - still an integral piece to the Marvel universe, Iron Man doesn't hold the kind of acclaim one finds in a Spider-Man or Batman.
Or Superman. Where that most influential comic book movie attempted to invoke majesty, the new wave of comic book movies - starting with X-Men, I suppose - has had their sights set firmly on "cool". If you told them they were part of American Mythology, they'd laugh at you. Or give a snark.
In that vein, Iron Man is a good example, probably the best I've seen. The cool is unmistakable, from the first frame, where Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), a genius defense contractor demonstrating his latest weaponry in Afghanistan, exchanges some banter with his escort troops ("Good God," he says when the driver speaks, "I had no idea you were a woman.") In most movies involving characters whose lines must be concentrated into tiny bubbles inside condensed panels, their dialogue comes across much the same way. Here, where Downey Jr. is allowed to ramble and digress (and nobody can do so like Downey Jr. can), we realize that this may be the first truly intelligent superhero movie - or at the very least, the first superhero movie where we would recognize that someone is a genius without having to be told.
Things go bad in Afghanistan, and the plot begins to unfold, involving Stark, who has a crisis of conscience in learning that his weapons may have fallen into the wrong hands; his business partner Obidiah Stone (Jeff Bridges, with a thick beard and shaved head), who worries that Stark's antics and eccentricity may drive their company under; his assistant Pepper Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow), who is spectacularly competent, who matches him witticism for witticism, who may be in love with him but who is also concerned that his antics could get him killed; Rhodey (Terrence Howard), a friend in the military; and agents of a mysterious government agency known as the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division (S.H.I.E.L.D.).
The plot unfolds via - and boy, how am I ever going to get through this part - an ambush on Stark in Afganistan, where a warlord named Raza (Faran Tahir) takes him captive with the intent of forcing him to build his latest weaponry for him. Rather than oblige him, Stark, with the help of a friendly co-captive Yinsen (Shaun Toub), builds a device to help him escape: an early version of what will become his Iron Man suit. He escapes, and fearful that his company has sold weapons to the enemy, announces that they are shutting down their weapons manufacturing division, a move of which Obidiah Stone does not approve. Stark upgrades his Iron Man suit, allowing him to fly, evade a pair of F-22's, and take care of the problems in Afghanistan almost as an afterthought. But Stone gets wind of the device, builds his own version, and problems ensue. Oh, and Stark was wounded in the chest, with shrapnel near to his heart, requiring that an electromagnet stays powered in his chest at all times, lest he die.
If that sounds complicated, well, it is, but events unfold with a certain diabolical logic that leaves you grinning. It's Downey's performance that drives the movie, and his flawed, rambling, womanizing, brilliant character, but the supporting cast is essential, particularly Bridges as the business partner who will become the movie's villain, but who seems less "super" than the supervillains in most superhero movies, in that his goal is nothing more than the salvaging of his company, which he believes Stark is undermining. He's ruthless and cunning, but we can empathize with him, to a degree. Paltrow, as Potts, the assistant, is effortless, but game. We believe that she is aware of the tension between them, but mature enough to stay realistic about these things. Howard plays it completely straight, which is the right decision. Leslie Bibb has a nice role as a reporter with almost as much brainpower as sex appeal.
The special effects are noteworthy - we expect our special effects in high budged superhero movies to be good, but "expensive" and "skillful" are not always the same thing, and even as we have guys in big flying iron suits fighting one another, we sense the personalities behind them, and their mass and momentum. We may not believe them, but to what degree we can we accept them.
I would say that we're approaching a point where when we think of a movie like "Iron Man" we think more of the movie and less of the source material. We're not there yet, but it feels like we should be. This is a quality flick on any curve.
Rating: 3.5 out of 4.
Still to be reviewed: Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Mulholland Drive. Shipped: There Will Be Blood, Deadwood S1D1, Deadwood S1D2.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
About this blog
I suppose every blog tends to start with a "Hello, World" entry, and I suppose that this is that entry for this particular blog.
To plow through the awkwardness of the blank page, then, I'll open with a bit about me. I am a 30-year-old ex-electrical-engineer and current professional online poker player named Greg Shaffer. I keep a separate blog, which contains content related to life and online poker career at Max EV, but the content of this particular blog will be kept more focused. As the title suggests, I will be reviewing movies and TV shows that I either own or acquire via DVD. My brother and sister-in-law surprised me with a six month subscription to Blockbuster Online for Christmas this year (my brother is in the Air Force and will be deployed over Christmas, so we had our Christmas over Thanksgiving) and I plan on abusing the hell out of it, and writing my impressions of the movies and TV shows that I garner through the service onto this blog.
As such, this blog will contain few if any reviews of recent movies. I might occasionally look through new TV shows as they air, but as I prefer to write about TV shows by the season, that seems less likely.
I have reviewed movies in the past - for a few years, some friends of mine and I kept a movie review site going called "Those Guys' Movie Reviews" which eventually faded into oblivion, but what few readers we encountered tended to react pretty favorably.
So, to start off, my first reviews will be of movies that I missed on their first appearance, that I meant to catch up on, but that I was not enthusiastic enough about to purchase or rent on my own.
In my possession: Iron Man, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Mulholland Dr..
To plow through the awkwardness of the blank page, then, I'll open with a bit about me. I am a 30-year-old ex-electrical-engineer and current professional online poker player named Greg Shaffer. I keep a separate blog, which contains content related to life and online poker career at Max EV, but the content of this particular blog will be kept more focused. As the title suggests, I will be reviewing movies and TV shows that I either own or acquire via DVD. My brother and sister-in-law surprised me with a six month subscription to Blockbuster Online for Christmas this year (my brother is in the Air Force and will be deployed over Christmas, so we had our Christmas over Thanksgiving) and I plan on abusing the hell out of it, and writing my impressions of the movies and TV shows that I garner through the service onto this blog.
As such, this blog will contain few if any reviews of recent movies. I might occasionally look through new TV shows as they air, but as I prefer to write about TV shows by the season, that seems less likely.
I have reviewed movies in the past - for a few years, some friends of mine and I kept a movie review site going called "Those Guys' Movie Reviews" which eventually faded into oblivion, but what few readers we encountered tended to react pretty favorably.
So, to start off, my first reviews will be of movies that I missed on their first appearance, that I meant to catch up on, but that I was not enthusiastic enough about to purchase or rent on my own.
In my possession: Iron Man, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, and Mulholland Dr..
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