Review: Up in the Air

I have to give Up in the Air credit.  It baffled me.  How does one make a movie during one of the worst economic crises in recent memory and expect us to sympathize with the ax-man?

Casting him as George Clooney isn’t a bad start.  Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a man without a tether, a complicated modern character full of contradictions and questions.  His story, and the performance, are instant classics.

Inspired performances by Vera Farmiga (Alex Goran) and Anna Kendrick (Natalie Keener), who play Clooney’s foils, round out a great cast.  Both think they’re Bingham’s match – Keener, professionally and Goran, personally.  The truth is much more interesting and complicated than just that.

Keener’s system of webcam-based employee termination creates the film’s central dilemma.  Sadly enough, it doesn’t seem as far-fetched as it once might, and the film itself mentions “Coke and IBM have been doing this for years.”  A sort of delicious irony that Bingham must then prove his way of firing people is better, or face his own impending irrelevance.

And yet.  If only Bingham had any other job, this movie might be merely an entertaining drama that confronts our expectations about how people live their lives.  Indeed, as a challenge to the traditional values of family and companionship, the movie is nearly profound.  Bingham is consistently shown to be more content living his solo lifestyle than any of his traditional, tethered-down counterparts.  So often we assume that because someone doesn’t share our personal priorities, they’re misguided and unhappy.  Flipping that basic assumption on its head is a radical notion.  But still, that nagging question.  Why this job, why now?

The movie intersperses quick snippets of faux interviews with the unemployed, but the unemployed are not an issue here, not really.  This is Bingham’s story, and our emotional attachment is meant for him.  Only at the last minute are the legions of out-of-work Americans thrown one maddeningly condescending bone, and it’s here that we find Up in the Air is meant not as a wake-up call, not as a challenge to our depersonalized, corrupt way of business.  Rather, Up in the Air is a panacea.  It’s working-class Xanax.  Watch your movie, smile, go to sleep.

It’s hard to imagine a move more out-of-touch.  A slick Hollywood sheen permeates each scene – the banter is witty with a familiar cadence, and there are snappy montages for every occasion.  Just when you think the film’s about to dig deeper, it pulls back.  In the end, the whole thing has the feel of a handshake from the ax-man.  Just too warm, too familiar, too much fake empathy behind the eyes.

Review: The Road (2009)

Any adaptation is tasked with answering the question “Why does this exist?”  The Road (the film) never makes a case for itself.  While there are inevitable deviations from the events of the novel, the movie is crippled moreso by slavishly following the plot.   Events play out onscreen almost as if they have to, never naturally evolving from one moment to the next.  The characters are propelled down the road not out of some survival instinct, but because It Is Written.  (And when Cormac McCarthy Writes It, I suppose you listen.)

Tonally, the movie feels akin to a made-for-TV Hallmark nativity special. There’s a kind of sleek reverence throughout.  The soundtrack emotionally panders, inappropriately swelling, tugging at the heartstrings to the point of almost self-parody.  There is no music at the end of the world.

Several undeniably striking images are undermined by heavyhanded moments that seem transplanted.  When an earthquake sends trees crashing down chaotically, we see inserts of cameras that were apparently strapped to the trees as they fell. It looks straight out of a slapsticky Evil Dead homage, not a grim post-apocalyptic odyssey.

Likewise, in a film where much of the disaster imagery is appropriately staid, one shot stands out ugly from the rest.  A pair of mammoth ships beached against a city’s horizon.  From the point of view of the wandering duo, this could be a staggering reminder of their insignificance in the face of such destruction. Instead, we’re given some impossible Peter Jackson vistacam view, shattering any sense of atmosphere, let alone cinematic logic.

I suspect anyone who’s read the book has their own sense of just how particularly each line was said, the tone and motivation behind each character, so I’ll refrain from judging the performances.  Mortensen, as this film’s ostensible Atlas, had a difficult task, and he certainly throws himself to it.  I will say that my version of The Road carries more stoicism, less melodrama.  The end of the world seems like it would put a strange filter on all emotions.

As what’s potentially the world’s first serious-minded postapocalyptic film, The Road has an admirable goal, and adapting this particular work is no easy feat.  The Road is not necessarily a bad film – rather, it falls disappointingly far short of its reach.

Where the Wild Things Aren’t

Where the Emo Things Are, more like. There’s not an ounce of “wild” in this film. The creatures are wonderful and spectacular to behold, a pure miracle of art design – which is why it’s such a disappointment when they turn out to be a morose bunch, spending more time brooding and crying than anything else. I’d love to see them in a less tedious movie.

The film seems crafted to be the antithesis to the glut of saccharine kids’ flicks filled with empty, flashy images and crammed with nonstop, senseless stimulation, but it veers too far in the opposite direction, with its bleak sepia tones and group therapy dialogue. It may capture the melancholy of childhood, but it didn’t make me feel the sadness as much as it constantly badgered me to feel sad. The film forgets that childhood is also a time of exuberance and joy, curiosity and energy. All things this film lacks.

Children’s movies need more darkness. Growing up, the movies that impacted me the most eschewed cartoony pizazz for deeper stories and images. WTWTA admirably tries to be something of substance, but it’s a hollow experience borne of pop-psychology, with little to say about childhood, adulthood, or being wild.

Review: Antichrist

Every once in a while a film comes along that shocks its audience awake, reminding us just what the medium is capable of beyond shocks and thrills. Antichrist bears a heavy load in its shoulders, from the unimaginable expectations such an audacious title brings alone. It seemed impossible to go in with a virgin mind, and yet the film sidestepped the hype and deftly burrowed into my subconscious.

It’s possible I’ve never seen a more harrowing, honest and inescapable movie before. It concerns itself with no less than the very nature of man, woman, and the world around us – not to mention the existence and ramifications of evil. It would take many viewings and someone more studied than I to delve into the dense semiotics of the film, but on a purely visceral level, Antichrist is as engaging a movie as I’ve seen. I’ve long been a fan of Von Trier for the same reasons many despise him – his prankish sadism, his highbrow yet smirking approach to weighty matters, his seemingly deliberate obtuseness – and this is no movie to convert the unbelievers.

Even so, it’s a movie that must be experienced – it is, itself, an experience. Dafoe and Gainsbourg are unbelievable. The cinematography is unpredictably effective – as always, Von Trier seems to delight in subverting even the most basic expectations, such as shot/reverse shot. As for the horror – where else will you find a movie that employs a misogyny researcher, theology and evil researcher and a horror movie researcher? There’s creepy imagery, existential dread, horrifically violent shocks and unsettling creatures, but what makes it all so effective is how each taps into the emotion at the heart(less) core of the film. Antichrist is a challenging film, an uneasy film. It’s Important. Go see it.

Review: Moon / Dead Snow

Thursday, I made a double feature of Moon and Dead Snow, while this afternoon I saw Up. The first two I’m reviewing in brief here, but I’ll post my Up review separately soon – that’s a movie which deserves its own post, for sure. (Spoiler alert: it was excellent.)

Moon

Moon is, as you might suspect, a science fiction film.

At its best, sci-fi exists to help us consider and unravel the problems of the future before we’re faced with them, or to hold a mirror to contemporary concerns. Moon doesn’t really travel these waters. The sci-fi elements are merely window dressing for what’s essentially a character piece with a twist straight out of The Twilight Zone.

Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) oversees mining operations on the moon – a thankless, lonely task. He’s nearing the end of his three year contract and anxious to return home, where we assume he’ll be set for life. Why else would anyone commit to three years of what’s essentially solitary confinement? His only company, if you can call it that, is a robot (Kevin Spacey) who has the emotional range of a Qwerty keyboard. Anyone would go a little bonkers.

So Sam is seeing people. It starts as brief, distracting flashes, but pretty soon he’s seeing himself. And talking to himself. And fighting with himself. That last is hard to fake, crazy or not.

Thankfully, the movie wastes no time in misdirection, quickly revealing the root of Sam’s double. What’s much more interesting than the contrivance that gives us the joy of seeing Sam Rockwell play off Sam Rockwell is just sitting back and watching it happen. Rockwell gives it his all, turning in two entertaining and nuanced performances that put the “myself” in the question “How am I not myself?”

If you don’t mind overlooking a whole score of logical plot holes, Moon is a fairly compelling fantasy of human drama. Problem is, the minute you start to seriously consider the ramifications of the story, the entire conceit falls apart.

I won’t belabor the point (or include spoilers), but consider this: what does Sam (or any human, for that matter) do that a robot couldn’t also do, and better? The unseen masterminds behind the corporation in Moon have only made their operation needlessly complicated. Stock holders would not approve.

Dead Snow

Fans of B-movies are always having to settle. Where we see a high concept goldmine, the world at large sees “weird,” “dumb” and “unprofitable.” Thus, when some unsung genius performs the mental alchemy it takes to bring together such disparate forces as, say, the Mega Shark and the Giant Octopus, the sheer economic reality behind realizing such a titanic battle necessitates certain sacrifices where quality is concerned. Namely, the special effects. Or the acting. Or the writing. Or the directing. Mostly, all of the above.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Enter, zombie Nazis.

Dead Snow is a German horror movie about a group of friends who are attacked by zombie Nazis. It’s a movie with depth and resonance. I don’t mean that it’s Ingmar Bergman Makes a Zombie Flick. Its depth is in depravity, and its resonance is in the shouts of the audience. I say it is a “horror movie,” but I think a better term is “midnight movie.” It’s a movie to be seen at midnight, in a theatre packed with like-minded cult film fans prepared to laugh, howl and cringe.

It’s directed cleverly, inching suspensefully to the inevitable reveal, then exploding joyously into all-out slayage. The writers take full advantage of the humor of the situation, paying due homage to the classics (like the Evil Dead films) that paved their way. The actors clearly know what kind of movie they’re in, but never slice off more ham than they can chew. And the special effects…oh, the joyous, joyous special effects.

Zombie purists, be warned: these zombies are beyond belief. They run. They think. One scouts his prey with binoculars. Our heroes have seen zombie movies, but that won’t help them, because they haven’t seen this zombie movie.

The kills are preposterous. To describe them would be to rob the movie of its gloriously gory brinkmanship, but if you quickly jot down a list of your favorite internal organs, I can guarantee you’ll see them onscreen. Sometimes twice.

I don’t mean to oversell. Rosebud was not the lost Nazi treasure. The zombies don’t represent German guilt after World War II. You know what you’re in for, here. Dead Snow is not a perfect movie, but its sheer energy, humor and ingenuity more than makes up for the few minor flaws. It’s the most fun I’ve had at the movies in years.

Review: Drag Me to Hell

I tried something new with my review for “Drag Me to Hell.”  Instead of writing a full-fledged review, I jotted down some notes and then recorded my thoughts live.  You can listen to my full review here.  I hope to continue writing full reviews for whatever new movies I can catch, but I’ll probably continue to record reviews for older movies and films I’m catching up on – I hope the variety will make things more interesting.  (At the very least, you get to hear my horrendous Midwestern diction.)

Review: The Brothers Bloom

I’m not especially fond of con man movies. A genre that constantly tries to outsmart its audience is at a distinct disadvantage – you can’t con someone who’s in on the con. At least, not if they’re paying attention. Most con movies, then, resort to either constructing hopelessly convoluted plots in the hopes that the audience just can’t keep up, or directly cheating, withholding vital evidence from the audience that makes the outcome impossible to tell.

Regardless, it’s a genre that’s bereft of much depth, a self-sabotaging construct that devotes itself to hashing out familiar twists rather than creative innovations.

What sets The Brothers Bloom apart is that it’s never concerned with conning the viewer. Writer/director Rian Johnson (of the stylish high school noir Brick) has crafted a con film that’s more concerned with the emotional honesty of its characters than devilish scriptwriter’s tricks. It’s fitting, given the film’s philosophy that “the best con is one where everyone gets exactly what they want.”

A Trekkie’s Thoughts on Star Trek (2009)

I can’t remember a time when I hadn’t seen Star Trek. As a child, this universe, these characters were so ingrained in my worldview that even now, as an adult, it’s fascinating to look back and see how the long-running series has become a strong element of my personality. It’s not really a matter of knowing what jettisoning the warp core means, or being more familiar with the (future) history of the United Federation of Planets than is conceivably useful; it’s a philosophy based on courage, optimism and, yes, logic. It’s an emotional attachment that goes beyond nostalgia, to the essence of self-definition.

I share this only to make absolutely clear that I have no idea how this movie will play for those unfamiliar with Trek. On the same token, I’m a harsh judge. When you love something, you demand it to be excellent. On that frontier, Star Trek exceeds all bounds.

Live Tweet: Star Trek Nemesis

Note: I’ve been live-tweeting movies lately.  Earlier today I live-tweeted Star Trek: Nemesis, and I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.  I’m archiving it here, and will likely do so with other movies in the future.  Still trying to work out the best format, however. Beware spoilers for a six-year-old movie.  Follow me on Twitter.

• Now watching Nemesis. Because I’m masochistic. Wondering if it’s as bad as I remember.
• Nemesis’ sins as I remember them: playing fast and loose with canon, killing a beloved character for no reason, not feeling like Star Trek.
• So far Nemesis’ biggest flaw is just being boring. Still, it feels good to spend time with this crew again. Miss TNG. </3
• “you’re not going to believe this…it’s theleron.” DUN DUN DUN!

A long, unintended absence

When I started this blog, a few entries and one long month ago, it was my intention to update it several times  a week, at the very least.  Then, my grandfather passed away, and like many other things, the blog was put on hold for the important stuff.

I don’t have any intention of turning this into a personal journal, but I had a strong sense that my grandfather’s death was something I should write about.  I was, of course, very close to my grandfather, and this was the first time in my adult life anyone close to me had passed.  It was a deeply moving event, in ways I didn’t and still don’t fully understand, but as days turned into weeks, one month later I still don’t have the words for it.   I’m not sure I ever will – death is that great unknowable thing.  We spend our lives rushing towards it, mostly looking backwards, so when we come face to face it’s a moment of great disconcertion and mystery.

So, with no epiphany in sight, the best thing seems to be to move forward.  Back to what I do best – frivolous, and frequent, updates!