Two poorly-reviewed, big, dumb comedies opened this weekend, in direct competition with each other--evidently something of a rarity in the summer blockbuster season. Get Smart has taken the box office prize over The Love Guru, Mike Meyers' new project. Undoubtedly Get Smart is the better movie. But, having seen it last night, I can't help wishing I had seen the abysmally-received Love Guru instead, just to see how bad it was. Get Smart is predictably mediocre, but The Love Guru has something of the unfathomable about it. And so picking the "better" movie to see now looks like the wrong choice.
Get Smart doesn't need a lot of reviewing, so I'll just lay out the basics:
Unlike most comedies of this sort, the good jokes don't start to fall until the middle third of the movie. This is strange, because the first third is the stuff of the TV series, which should be reliably funny. Instead, the movie finds humor where it can get it, which happens to be in an extended and pointless James Bond-like crashing-an-eastern-european's-swanky-party-while-searching-his-house-for-secret-plans scene. Those are always the best part of the Bond movies, so it works here for Get Smart's first laughs. The first half-hour is weirdly unfunny, given that it is basically office politics, something Carrell is superb at.
The final third of the movie, though, is simply unrewarding. Do I care if the President (James Caan) blows up? No. Am I surprised at the identity of the double agent or in Max's and 99's budding relationship? No. And yet all these explosions and near-death escapes are thrown at me as though I do. It's all very tiresome. The naive thing to say would be, "It just turns into a regular action movie." But I LIKE regular action movies, y'know?
Carrell, Alan Arkin, and Terence Stamp are all fantastic here, while Anne Hathaway ought to have filed an injunction against the film being released. She is wooden. It is hard for me to believe this will not single-handedly destroy her career. The Rock, as usual, wears thin after about 4 minutes.
Most of all, the movie seems rushed and incoherent. In the opening credits, we see that Max's life is a mess: his milk is curdled, his goldfish is dead, etc. But, wait--in fact, he seems to be the most organized, driven, and reliable person in the fucking world. It seems the movie doesn't understand its own protagonist.
Get Smart comes out of the box already-dated and out of touch. But not, as one might expect, because its 1960s TV reference no longer sticks---rather, because it seems so very late 1990s. You know, when Mike Meyers was making those other movies.
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
R.I.P. Sidney Pollack
It's true, Sidney Pollack did not direct a great number of "great" films--perhaps none. And, in my movie-watching lifetime, he only directed two high-profile movies, The Firm and Sabrina.
What is much more important for me is that Sidney Pollack was one of THE great character actors. Who doesn't recall the turn-off-your-cell-phones clip that played before movies last year? ("We don't interrupt your phone calls--don't interrupt our movies"; with Pollack "directing" someone's break-up phone call)--it was a dumb idea, but one thing was very clear: Sidney Pollack plays a terrifying, self-assured asshole like no one else.
A lot of this was Pollack's voice and physical presence: everything Burt Lancaster was going for in The Sweet Smell of Success, but without the gay (under?)tones. While usually bespectacled and obviously "civilized," Pollack could switch into "threatening" with utter believability.
I even remember his character's name in Michael Clayton, an utterly forgettable film: Marty Bach! Of course! Who else could have played Marty Bach?
The same is true of his character in Eyes Wide Shut---well, really it's the same character. Your older friend, whom you trusted, who fucked you over, and is now expecting you to hold his shit.
Pollack is really truly great in the 1992 Woody Allen movie Husbands and Wives, especially one scene where it is entirely possible that he is going to murder Liam Neeson. The entire movie would fall apart if anyone else had had to play this role. One instantly recalls a scene where Pollack drags his new girlfriend across a driveway to his car. "He could kill her," you are thinking every second of the way. It's something Woody Allen's films normally stumble over, but Pollack was a genius casting decision (in his first starring role) that makes the whole movie work.
So, not an extensive filmography, and not an illustrious one. But like a great fielder on an otherwise mediocre baseball team, Pollack's acting raised the level of everything he was part of. Will we remember Out of Africa? Probably not. But Pollack's acting in the films of *other* directors (Kubrick, Allen) will always be worth another viewing. Mr. Pollack, we will miss you.
What is much more important for me is that Sidney Pollack was one of THE great character actors. Who doesn't recall the turn-off-your-cell-phones clip that played before movies last year? ("We don't interrupt your phone calls--don't interrupt our movies"; with Pollack "directing" someone's break-up phone call)--it was a dumb idea, but one thing was very clear: Sidney Pollack plays a terrifying, self-assured asshole like no one else.
A lot of this was Pollack's voice and physical presence: everything Burt Lancaster was going for in The Sweet Smell of Success, but without the gay (under?)tones. While usually bespectacled and obviously "civilized," Pollack could switch into "threatening" with utter believability.
I even remember his character's name in Michael Clayton, an utterly forgettable film: Marty Bach! Of course! Who else could have played Marty Bach?
The same is true of his character in Eyes Wide Shut---well, really it's the same character. Your older friend, whom you trusted, who fucked you over, and is now expecting you to hold his shit.
Pollack is really truly great in the 1992 Woody Allen movie Husbands and Wives, especially one scene where it is entirely possible that he is going to murder Liam Neeson. The entire movie would fall apart if anyone else had had to play this role. One instantly recalls a scene where Pollack drags his new girlfriend across a driveway to his car. "He could kill her," you are thinking every second of the way. It's something Woody Allen's films normally stumble over, but Pollack was a genius casting decision (in his first starring role) that makes the whole movie work.
So, not an extensive filmography, and not an illustrious one. But like a great fielder on an otherwise mediocre baseball team, Pollack's acting raised the level of everything he was part of. Will we remember Out of Africa? Probably not. But Pollack's acting in the films of *other* directors (Kubrick, Allen) will always be worth another viewing. Mr. Pollack, we will miss you.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)
First off, let's imagine what a GOOD sequel to this franchise, made in 2008, might have looked like. Yeah? Pretty difficult. In the era of Tomb Raider, the Da Vinci Code, National Treasure, and the Mummy, making a movie in this genre *at all* seems like a dubious proposition.
Oh but wait, the man who brought us The Phantom Menace wrote the story? And a 66-year-old man will star? Now we're cooking.
But let me come at this another way. At some point in the movie, 5 or so people are in a boat on the Amazon, which is about to hurtle over several towering waterfalls. "Oh no!"--you are supposed to think. But I thought, "Who *are* these people?" It's hard in this movie to 1) remember if a character was in the earlier films (Karen Allen) 2) is a new, annoying addition meant to seem like he is from the universe of the earlier films (Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent [the dean]) or 3) an entirely new character meant to draw in specific audiences (Shia LaBeouf and Cate Blanchett). So, when I should be worrying about whether they are going to survive this waterfall-jump (ripped off from the Fugitive, let's be honest), instead I am thinking--"maybe these characters are from the Temple of Doom movie," which I've not seen.
So the film has what wikipedia would call "Extended Universe" issues. The largest of these is the plot device itself, which was made into a theme-park ride during the decade of development on the script. The crystal skull is bound to annoy and disappoint everyone. The theater audience I saw this movie with were a real bunch of dolts, but I think a more sophisticated crowd might find certain skull-related scenes risible.
Basically, if you know what the word "risible" means, you might have a chance to use it describing this film.
Are there people-eating ants? Yes. Is Shia LaBeouf less annoying than we suspsected? Yes. Have we not always wanted to drive a motorcycle through an Ivy League library? Yes.
On the other hand, Cate Blanchett's much-touted role might have been played just as well by virtually anyone, the movie is about 15 (specific) minutes too long, some scenes are a bit "Sky Captain"-ish, and it ends badly.
The main question you are asking is, does it COUNT as an Indiana Jones movie? Or is it like the Velvet Underground album without Lou Reed? The crappy part is, yeah, it counts. It looks (about) right, that famous score is there, Harrison Ford is good, people with accents continue to be evil, and you kind of get into a lot of the scenes. But that's about all. To put it in my terms, you stop hating on Harrison Ford's pants as a 2008-abomination about 40 minutes in, and from that point on, the movie is Spielberg's to lose.
Oh but wait, the man who brought us The Phantom Menace wrote the story? And a 66-year-old man will star? Now we're cooking.
But let me come at this another way. At some point in the movie, 5 or so people are in a boat on the Amazon, which is about to hurtle over several towering waterfalls. "Oh no!"--you are supposed to think. But I thought, "Who *are* these people?" It's hard in this movie to 1) remember if a character was in the earlier films (Karen Allen) 2) is a new, annoying addition meant to seem like he is from the universe of the earlier films (Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent [the dean]) or 3) an entirely new character meant to draw in specific audiences (Shia LaBeouf and Cate Blanchett). So, when I should be worrying about whether they are going to survive this waterfall-jump (ripped off from the Fugitive, let's be honest), instead I am thinking--"maybe these characters are from the Temple of Doom movie," which I've not seen.
So the film has what wikipedia would call "Extended Universe" issues. The largest of these is the plot device itself, which was made into a theme-park ride during the decade of development on the script. The crystal skull is bound to annoy and disappoint everyone. The theater audience I saw this movie with were a real bunch of dolts, but I think a more sophisticated crowd might find certain skull-related scenes risible.
Basically, if you know what the word "risible" means, you might have a chance to use it describing this film.
Are there people-eating ants? Yes. Is Shia LaBeouf less annoying than we suspsected? Yes. Have we not always wanted to drive a motorcycle through an Ivy League library? Yes.
On the other hand, Cate Blanchett's much-touted role might have been played just as well by virtually anyone, the movie is about 15 (specific) minutes too long, some scenes are a bit "Sky Captain"-ish, and it ends badly.
The main question you are asking is, does it COUNT as an Indiana Jones movie? Or is it like the Velvet Underground album without Lou Reed? The crappy part is, yeah, it counts. It looks (about) right, that famous score is there, Harrison Ford is good, people with accents continue to be evil, and you kind of get into a lot of the scenes. But that's about all. To put it in my terms, you stop hating on Harrison Ford's pants as a 2008-abomination about 40 minutes in, and from that point on, the movie is Spielberg's to lose.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Star Wars (1977)
Viktor Shklovsky, a Russian Formalist literary critic, held that the purpose of art was to "enstrange" us from the language of everyday life, to turn the familiar and automatic into something unrecognizable and startling or weird.
But what about when the startlingly weird has become so familiar that we approach it with utter familiarity, unflinchingly?
This is the case with the Star Wars films. The first film has two oddities in its title, "Episode IV" and the subtitle "A New Hope." When the film opens, and the scrolling introduction shows that we are already on the fourth episode--well, if anyone ever asks for a good example of what I take pretentiousness to be, it is this "Episode IV" business. And isn't the film just called "Star Wars"? Not until The Phantom Menace ruined the convenience of saying, "the first one," did it become necessary to ever *say* "A New Hope."
The confusing introduction is succeeded by ~20 minutes of one robot talking to himself--in space, in the desert--before we meet our hero, the ridiculously-named and badly-acted Luke Skywalker. At this point, the film settles into a fairy tale/adventure plot that is easy to follow: his family is murdered, he runs off to join the rebellion and take revenge, meets strange and exciting new people, is captured, escapes, loses his mentor, but wins the day in the big battle. A lot of ground is covered very quickly and not always coherently. Nonetheless, once Alec Guinness shows up, the movie is in good hands, and Harrison Ford brings some much-needed coolness to the nerdiness of the first half.
Compare this film with the near-contemporaneous Alien. While Star Wars is not "really" a sci-fi movie, but is obviously in the Arthurian tradition (what else could explain the light sabers?), Alien is also not really a sci-fi movie, but is truly a horror movie. Both movies have long, slow build-ups that I can imagine would tax most viewers' patience nowadays, but Star Wars chooses to spend this time with a lot of awkward explanatory dialogue, while Alien just sets mood. In Alien, the viewer initially does not know that there *are* aliens (title notwithstanding)--we are terrified when they pop up, just as the crew is. In Star Wars, ever oddity is weirdly taken for granted: nothing in this universe is weird FOR the characters.
The lesson here is, viewed "as though for the first time," Star Wars is clunky and weird. The Empire Strikes Back is the superior movie because it dispenses with much of the exposition and just advances several plot lines simultaneously (like Die Walküre as compared to Das Rheingold). On the other hand, Star Wars is made to be watched over and over--it is a film for nerds who want to know everything about this imaginary universe. There is no need for mood or even coherence. Alien is a well-made film. But I will never want to "go deeper" into its world.
The logic seems to be that something happens in the film because "that's what happens next in Star Wars." This is maddening from a technical perspective, but it is ideally made for fans (The Good the Bad and the Ugly is like this, too). Star Wars has surprisingly little action, only a dozen or so speaking parts, and truly awful dialogue. Long stretches are without charm. But like the Bible, King Arthur, the Song of Roland, or anything else you know the story of by heart, every part of the movie turns out to be perfectly situated and masterfully-ordered. Not because it couldn't have been done better or tighter, but because for all the weirdness of the organization, I want the same thing that is in my memory up on screen again: that's "how it goes."
But what about when the startlingly weird has become so familiar that we approach it with utter familiarity, unflinchingly?
This is the case with the Star Wars films. The first film has two oddities in its title, "Episode IV" and the subtitle "A New Hope." When the film opens, and the scrolling introduction shows that we are already on the fourth episode--well, if anyone ever asks for a good example of what I take pretentiousness to be, it is this "Episode IV" business. And isn't the film just called "Star Wars"? Not until The Phantom Menace ruined the convenience of saying, "the first one," did it become necessary to ever *say* "A New Hope."
The confusing introduction is succeeded by ~20 minutes of one robot talking to himself--in space, in the desert--before we meet our hero, the ridiculously-named and badly-acted Luke Skywalker. At this point, the film settles into a fairy tale/adventure plot that is easy to follow: his family is murdered, he runs off to join the rebellion and take revenge, meets strange and exciting new people, is captured, escapes, loses his mentor, but wins the day in the big battle. A lot of ground is covered very quickly and not always coherently. Nonetheless, once Alec Guinness shows up, the movie is in good hands, and Harrison Ford brings some much-needed coolness to the nerdiness of the first half.
Compare this film with the near-contemporaneous Alien. While Star Wars is not "really" a sci-fi movie, but is obviously in the Arthurian tradition (what else could explain the light sabers?), Alien is also not really a sci-fi movie, but is truly a horror movie. Both movies have long, slow build-ups that I can imagine would tax most viewers' patience nowadays, but Star Wars chooses to spend this time with a lot of awkward explanatory dialogue, while Alien just sets mood. In Alien, the viewer initially does not know that there *are* aliens (title notwithstanding)--we are terrified when they pop up, just as the crew is. In Star Wars, ever oddity is weirdly taken for granted: nothing in this universe is weird FOR the characters.
The lesson here is, viewed "as though for the first time," Star Wars is clunky and weird. The Empire Strikes Back is the superior movie because it dispenses with much of the exposition and just advances several plot lines simultaneously (like Die Walküre as compared to Das Rheingold). On the other hand, Star Wars is made to be watched over and over--it is a film for nerds who want to know everything about this imaginary universe. There is no need for mood or even coherence. Alien is a well-made film. But I will never want to "go deeper" into its world.
The logic seems to be that something happens in the film because "that's what happens next in Star Wars." This is maddening from a technical perspective, but it is ideally made for fans (The Good the Bad and the Ugly is like this, too). Star Wars has surprisingly little action, only a dozen or so speaking parts, and truly awful dialogue. Long stretches are without charm. But like the Bible, King Arthur, the Song of Roland, or anything else you know the story of by heart, every part of the movie turns out to be perfectly situated and masterfully-ordered. Not because it couldn't have been done better or tighter, but because for all the weirdness of the organization, I want the same thing that is in my memory up on screen again: that's "how it goes."
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Shine a Light
One of the strangest movies you will see this year is the new Martin Scorcese film, a 2 hour concert documentary of a 2006 Rolling Stones concert. It is by now cliché to remark upon the bizarre and unmotivated "timing" of this movie: I contend, against this cliché, that it has been equally inopportune to film a Rolling Stones concert since around 1974. Was there ever a time in the past 30 years when the Rolling Stones would have been GOOD live? When their hits wouldn't have descended into endless boogie; when there wouldn't have been too many back-up singers and horns?; when the songs you knew would have felt obligatory and the new songs unwelcome? I contend: no. So, if this movie had been made at any point in my lifetime, I can't imagine it being significantly different. Even their much remarked-upon age seems irrelevant, in this way: the last time that I "updated" my mental image of the Rolling Stones was probably 1998-- and those ten years have made no more of a difference upon them than they have on the mummies in the British Museum.
The Rolling Stones could play every song off their first twelve albums and early singles--probably 8 hours of music--as well as their scattered hits from the 70s and 80s, and have filled over four such documentaries with nary a bad song. Instead, they take the innovative path of playing numerous unfamiliar and unpleasant songs from little-known records such as Undercover. There are three songs off Some Girls, three off Exile on Main St., two off Let it Bleed, and one each off of Beggar's Banquet and Sticky Fingers. This is a strange image of the band's legacy: no "Ruby Tuesday," "Under My Thumb," "Paint it Black," "Gimme Shelter," or "Street Fighting Man"? Or more to the point, none of the mega-hits "Beast of Burden," "I Know It's Only Rock and Roll," or "Miss You"? That is to say, I found the set list unbearably pretentious and miscalculated. The only explanation I can find is, it would be impossible to play every hit--so why try? The solution that Bob Dylan has found--to constantly reinvent his most popular songs in new styles--does not suit the Stones, who have been playing in the Exile on Main St. bombastic made-for-the-Super-Bowl-halftime-show style for over 30 years.
As a movie, it ain't much. The IMAX theater I saw it in made it almost unbearably huge and hard-to-follow. The cuts are dizzying, and the sound is shapeless. Because Ron Wood and Keith Richards barely play the guitar riffs, most of the band's sound is anchored, not by (as one might assume) some invisible third guitar player, but by the ringer bass player and an omnipresent keyboardist. The result is chaos: constant soloing and songs stretched out usually for an extra minute of pure enthusiasm. The much-needed interludes of interviews and "flashbacks" help with pacing a great deal, but one has all the more respect for these elderly men when you realize how tired one gets just *watching* them.
The most interesting thing to say about this film is, I believe: why did this group of musicians commit to this path so long ago and not deviate from it? There is something so utterly tasteless about the arena-rock of post-1960s Stones, that has somehow become the ultimate formula for the world's most successful rock band. The key, I think, is in the presence of Hillary and Bill Clinton in the film: the Stones are the ultimate in bloated comfort, like Bill Clinton's oratory, and in an impossible-to-locate efficiency, like Hillary's nebulous fashion. Bill Clinton is a famously popular and rousing speaker--and yet his speeches are utterly forgettable and notoriously long. That barely any guitar RIFFS can be heard by this band that virtually invented the guitar riff, is paramount. And oddest of all is that none of the dozen performers onstage finds this odd, that everyone in the audience appears to be having the time of their life-- that is, that this problem (the shapelessness of the music) is not felt by anyone else as such. And since the Rolling Stones as well as invented the kind of rock music we have today, why did it end up *here* of all imaginable scenarios?
The Rolling Stones could play every song off their first twelve albums and early singles--probably 8 hours of music--as well as their scattered hits from the 70s and 80s, and have filled over four such documentaries with nary a bad song. Instead, they take the innovative path of playing numerous unfamiliar and unpleasant songs from little-known records such as Undercover. There are three songs off Some Girls, three off Exile on Main St., two off Let it Bleed, and one each off of Beggar's Banquet and Sticky Fingers. This is a strange image of the band's legacy: no "Ruby Tuesday," "Under My Thumb," "Paint it Black," "Gimme Shelter," or "Street Fighting Man"? Or more to the point, none of the mega-hits "Beast of Burden," "I Know It's Only Rock and Roll," or "Miss You"? That is to say, I found the set list unbearably pretentious and miscalculated. The only explanation I can find is, it would be impossible to play every hit--so why try? The solution that Bob Dylan has found--to constantly reinvent his most popular songs in new styles--does not suit the Stones, who have been playing in the Exile on Main St. bombastic made-for-the-Super-Bowl-halftime-show style for over 30 years.
As a movie, it ain't much. The IMAX theater I saw it in made it almost unbearably huge and hard-to-follow. The cuts are dizzying, and the sound is shapeless. Because Ron Wood and Keith Richards barely play the guitar riffs, most of the band's sound is anchored, not by (as one might assume) some invisible third guitar player, but by the ringer bass player and an omnipresent keyboardist. The result is chaos: constant soloing and songs stretched out usually for an extra minute of pure enthusiasm. The much-needed interludes of interviews and "flashbacks" help with pacing a great deal, but one has all the more respect for these elderly men when you realize how tired one gets just *watching* them.
The most interesting thing to say about this film is, I believe: why did this group of musicians commit to this path so long ago and not deviate from it? There is something so utterly tasteless about the arena-rock of post-1960s Stones, that has somehow become the ultimate formula for the world's most successful rock band. The key, I think, is in the presence of Hillary and Bill Clinton in the film: the Stones are the ultimate in bloated comfort, like Bill Clinton's oratory, and in an impossible-to-locate efficiency, like Hillary's nebulous fashion. Bill Clinton is a famously popular and rousing speaker--and yet his speeches are utterly forgettable and notoriously long. That barely any guitar RIFFS can be heard by this band that virtually invented the guitar riff, is paramount. And oddest of all is that none of the dozen performers onstage finds this odd, that everyone in the audience appears to be having the time of their life-- that is, that this problem (the shapelessness of the music) is not felt by anyone else as such. And since the Rolling Stones as well as invented the kind of rock music we have today, why did it end up *here* of all imaginable scenarios?
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Polish Film Posters
Friday, April 11, 2008
Midnight Cowboy (1969)
Not every movie can age well. Midnight Cowboy has not aged well.
What does this mean? You might think I am saying that there may have been some quality in Midnight Cowboy which was originally present, but which has not survived down to the present day.
What I actually mean is that Midnight Cowboy is a bad film. The only aesthetic criteria I can possibly have are my own, i.e. those articulated and determined by (or against) the contemporary background. A film which has "aged well" is an old film that is good. This can be the only possible meaning of these words. We would never say of an out-of-print, unreadable 18th-C epistolary novel that is has "not aged well, *but*...." There is simply no "but"--a film that has aged well is a film that appears good to our standards. What has changed, of course, is not the film itself, but these standards. What we mean to say, then, is not that the film has aged well or poorly, but that we do or do not regard a film as being good (against a background of our previous ratings of said film).
I for one cannot imagine a more interesting question than why and in what ways these criteria change. But that is for another blog. I should just say here that what you remember about Midnight Cowboy--the great acting, the handful of quotable scenes, Jon Voight's endearing stupidity, how gross and intimidating New York can be--that stuff is all there, and it's all enjoyable. What you don't recall--the plot--is simply absent.
You may also have forgotten the cryptic and intrusive psychological flashbacks that attempt to give a "key" to understanding Voight's psyche, but without any payoff or weight. Or how the soundtrack plays the same song into the ground for the whole running time. Or how little significance (socio-historical, moral, plotwise) Rizzo's death has aside from conveniently getting Joe out of NYC.
What we learn about 1969 from this film will likely be analogous to what future generations will learn about *us* when they re-watch Crash in thirty-five years. For a "boundary-pushing" sixties film with a famous soundtrack and starring Dustin Hoffman, you would do better to watch the also-overrated The Graduate.
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