Some quick hits on the summer hits- June

On some levels this is a really fun movie. It plays off the viewer knowledge to the point where we are spotting things that we know in later films will come up. Overall though this is a film that is risen above some quirky material by the performances of James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, and Kevin Bacon. All three of them grab hold of the viewer everytime they are on screen and demand your attention. McAvoy plays Professor X with the same class and dignity that Patrick Stewart later brought to the part. He is the steadying influence on the X Men as he tries to be rationale about everything and avoid them blowing up and wiping out civilization. Fassbender has an even more menacing tone than McKellan found in the role of Magneto. He is playing nice for the sake of the cause but underneath it all he is sneering at everyone and everything and is insulted by how McAvoy associates with humans. Bacon is just enjoying his run as the bad guy here and he owns every single scene he is in. After that though the performances get a little worse and January Jones is absolutely horrid in her role. If she wasn't so appealing to the eyes she would be totally useless in her role. The students at the class get varying degrees of material but Jennifer Lawrence continues her great run here by rising above the material here. I'm only gonna go middle of the road here but that shouldn't be taken as me hating the movie. In the end I feel sort of ambivalent towards it. The cameo midway through was a nice surprise though.

My original thought posted on Facebook very simply said that, "Someone should show this movie to Michael Bay and tell him that THAT is how you do an action movie." That was met with mild skepticism but I invite anyone to watch this movie and say they don't like it. It has action, and explosions, and a few good scares but what sells the film is the heart and soul directly in the middle of this. It's an alien movie in the same way E.T. was in that the alien is sort of tangential to the rest of the film. I know this film got lumped as a mix of different Spielberg films (and in some ways it is) but this film has its own ideas and vision. Before everything goes haywire in the town what you have is two young men who are absolutely smitten with a girl that is starring in the film they are making. That could've been bad but Elle Fanning is so completely adorable in her role and you can see why these boys are tripping over themselves for her. The scene with them recording dialogue at the train station is riveting and moving. She is so good there and you as the viewer are sort of living through the eyes of the boys there as you sit there mouth agape at her reading. Then things get nuts and because you believe wholeheartedly in why someone would love this girl it draws you into the story. By the end you want the kids to be safe and a part of you wishes you were living in this moment so you could be having these adventures with your friends. This movie will make you want to be 12 again and have that wild-eyed sense of wonder. The end is a bit of a let down but still- it's almost perfect.

This movie is going well for the first ten minutes or so. Then it wildly veers off the rails and never really recovers leaving the viewer to wonder, "What the hell just happened?" I'm not sure it's entirely Ryan Reynolds fault. I'm also not sure all of it has to do with the fact that The Green Lantern was never really an interesting superhero. (And before I get grief from my comic book friends- let's be honest: If you were making a hierarchy of best superheroes how far down the list would you have to go before you got to Green Lantern?) I think the problem here was something Thor avoided adeptly a month ago. The story of Green Lantern is pretty convoluted. Instead of starting in the middle and then filling in gaps they decided to tell the story and it really drags the first half of the film down. Then it's basically- here's the villain, here's the other villain, they are vaguely working together, five minute battle, and over. That's it- that's the film. Reynolds natural charm I thought would help this film out but they never really give him anything to work with script wise, and the computer generated stuff is just way to omnipresent. On top of that, the villain is a gelatinous blob that is given a limited backstory and then they battle. There is no sense of urgency here which is different from Super 8. The battle feels forced to have a climax and then it ends. There was more that could've been done here and they just never found a way to make it work. Disappointing in so many ways.

There's an episode of South Park where Cartman is trying to get a Family Guy episode taken off the air. He goes to FOX headquarters and meets with Bart Simpson. The two characters have a debate about who is more bad ass, and thus should be talking to the Fox executives. The conversation goes like this:

Cartman: What's the worst thing you've ever done?

Bart Simpson: I stole the head off a statue once.

Cartman: Wow, that's pretty hardcore. Geez. That's like this one time when I didn't like a kid, so I ground his parents up into chili and fed it to him.

(At that point, Bart steps aside and lets Cartman go in.)

It made me think of this film because this wants to be Bad Santa so badly (no pun intended). However, it never finds that gear once. In Bad Santa you had a guy that was a complete dick but it belied the real nature of his character. He was a dick because he never had anything to latch on to that wanted him around. He was by himself and chose to stay that way pushing everyone else away. Here Cameron Diaz is just mean because the script calls for it. The kids get no bad lines and the worst thing she does to the students is continually berate the one girl- but it's never funny because the girl is unnerved by it. In Bad Santa, the kid is never phased by the anger and just presses forward. Then in Bad Teacher, the ending turns into a  typical romantic comedy- I'm assuming because the studio wanted it that way. Also, how can you waste Jason Segel the way this film did and feel good about yourself? This movie wants to be bad ass but it is just really stealing the head off a statue.

 

The first Cars took a bunch of flack from people, and I never quite understood why. Maybe it was simply because it wasn't Toy Story or Monsters Inc. Maybe it was because it was a bunch of talking cars. Maybe it was because the fast moving society in which we live couldn't deal with a movie celebrating the slowed down nature of a time long ago. Perhaps it was because Larry the Cable Guy was a major character in the film. The bad news is that if you fell in the last group you are not going to like this film because LTCG is a bigger part of this one. To be fair though, he is really really good in this film and while he can't replace Paul Newman- he does his best to interject enough of his "Aw shucks" charm to soften the blow. The story is a spy thriller as someone is trying to destroy new faster cars in an attempt to bring back the Lemon cars of old. Mater gets caught up in the plot and gets drafted by the British intelligence agency to help out with the case and that leads to plenty of fish out of water scenarios to explore. Most of them hit. At least one fails miserably but only because it is so questionable. (In Germany the bad guys trap Mater in the back of a semi and gas him. How did that possibly get past the idea stage?) The rest of the film though is an absolute delight both acting wise and visually. The graphics people here give the locations their own unique spin and there are enough sight gags (the pope mobile riding in a pope mobile) that you will chuckle. This skews younger than most Pixar films but it still has enough smile inducing moments to engage the adults in the crowd.

Schools Out Week- American Pie

 

1999 was a milestone year for me as it marked me moving from high school into college. In the summer between those two events this movie hit theaters and maybe it was legitimately funny, maybe it was nostalgia for a recent time, but I loved the film. I've revisited it a few times over the past few years and my excitement for the film never waned although I appreciated different things about it.

By now you probably know the story but for those that don't. Four friends that are graduating high school are preoccupied with sex. They all stand at different ends of the pendulum in their quest. Kevin has a girlfriend and is debating on taking the next step with her. Paul Finch is a sophisticate and is more concerned with studying the science of sex. Oz is a jock who has some idea of sex based off what his friends say but he falls hard for a chorus girl. And then there is Jim who is so clueless about sex that he is desperate for anything to go right for him in that regard. The four make a pact to lose their virginity before high school graduation. This pact is what moves the story forward as they battle obstacles that keep popping up to stop them from their goal.

With Can't Hardly Wait I talked about how writing parts as caricatures of high school students it doesn't work as well and ruins the movie. This is a film that could have very easily sailed off the rails because of such a problem but it avoids that trapping at every turn. Even when it looks like it is heading towards it. The four leads treat sex honestly and the script asks them to at every turn. Too often in these types of comedies sex is treated as a comedic end. Here it is the end goal but the story is more about how they come to accept what that step means for their lives. Jim wants to have sex, but more because he sees that as a legitimate last step before heading to college. It's something you need to do before you head off to college because it is how you define yourself as a man. He later finds that to not really be the case- as do the others- but the nobleness of the cause makes the story much easier to digest.

What the movie really gets right though is how it treats both sides of the sexual equation. In too many high school comedies it is all about the boys and their quest with no regard for how the women fit into that. The women are treated as sexual conquests- an estrogen filled Olympic medal that signifies accomplishment. In this film though, the women are written as three dimensional characters with real feelings and not as just doormats to be rolled over (no pun intended). That isn't to say they aren't attractive or viewed as goddesses. In 1999 Tara Reid and Mena Suvari were considered big deals in this film and Shannon Elizabeth vaulted to stardom by being in a long topless scene here. But the women are never written as bimbos or objects of desire. The movie takes pains to show that they are wrestling with their own feelings about sex throughout. The best scene of this is when Tara Reid and Natasha Lyonne's characters discuss sex. Vicky (Tara Reid) feels like once she has sex with Kevin he will dump her and she is not ready for that. In the end, after they have sex she dumps him because she realizes he wasn't after her just for the sex but rather because he cared for her. She makes the decision then that they should break up based off where their college lives are taking them and not because they chose to consummate a relationship. It's that level of maturity in the writing that is a refreshing change of pace. 

In Jim's case, he is the one being used for sex and gets one night standed by Michelle and thinks that is "cool." Jim also has his issues with his dad trying to relate to him about sex. Eugene Levy plays that part perfectly as the dad who wants to help, but also realizes he needs to let his son make mistakes for himself. Any other actor in that role may have overplayed it but Levy's bewildered look throughout is hilarious and his awkwardness is matched at every turn by Jim's It's not hard to see where Jim gets his unease from.

The other thing this movie helped popularize was the gross out comedy. By this point it has been done to death but in 1999 it was relatively fresh to that generation of audience. The long scene with Finch in the women's bathroom at school doesn't play well on multiple viewings and from the beginning was sort of silly. The scene where Jim humps the pie though is still funny and jarring even when you know it is coming. It's the direction that sells it everytime. Jim gets told a vagina is like warm apple pie and then sees an apple pie on the counter at home. He looks at it for a few beats while the viewer debates whether he will actually do something so off the wall. A few frames later when it cuts back and he is dry humping the pie it is hilarious and it's all based on the timing of it all. Too often, gross out humor is there just to be gross and not clever. In this particular case it was both.

This is still a warm film and once you get past the silly gags and lines designed to get a big laugh (What's my name bitch?) there is a film here that has a message for its viewers. Sex is a tricky subject and it's not something that has a set plan that everyone works for. It takes different paths and the best thing you can do is navigate and take your opportunity when you are ready for it. What do you really have to lose?

Schools Out Week- Can't Hardly Wait

Somewhere in the 1990's movie studios sort of gave up on making teen comedies.  There were still a few that drifted into theaters but after the high water mark of the 80's, the tide for this type of comedy really went back out to sea. In the late 90's the teen comedy made a comeback and this film was one of the first ones on the front lines trying to bring back the hi-jinks and end of school anarchy that the films of the 80's brought. It doesn't always work however with this film.

Can't Hardly Wait follows the traditional huge party after high school graduation. It's sort of a bottle episode movie where a majority of it takes place in one location with multiple stories colliding with one another. Preston Myers (Ethan Embry) has always pined for Amanda Beckett (Jennifer Love Hewitt) but has never quite worked up the courage to tell her that. He has written out a love letter, that has gone through multiple edits, waiting for the right time to tell her. At graduation, he finds out through the rumor mill that Amanda has been dumped by her boyfriend Mike Decker (Peter Facinelli) and sees his opportunity. He drags along his best friend Denise Fleming (Lauren Ambrose) and sets out to accomplish this mission.  At every turn he seems to be shot down by his own awkwardness or someone else interjecting themselves into his mission. To the film's credit, it never feels like a plot device- even though it absolutely is.

While he has that story going there are other stories that involve nerd William Licther looking to exact revenge on Mike Dexter, and gangster wannabe Kenny Fisher (Seth Green) has the singular mission of getting laid this evening. Those are the main stories that drive everything that happens at the party. In some ways it's nice that while they have this huge cast they only focus on a few stories instead of trying to give everyone some kind of purpose. The problem though is in how the characters are written.

It would be an understatement to say the characters are broadly written. They are painted in such abstract terms that it feels like it was done solely to shoehorn a character into one situation from the next. Kenny is so over the top goofy (despite being somewhat accurate) that it never makes his turn at the end feel earned. See- Kenny and Denise have a history together that gets played out while both are locked in an upstairs bathroom. It has heart, mostly do to Ambrose, but Kenny's swings in character are jarring. One minute he is sensitive and reconnecting with an old friend. The next he is a jerk playing her off as a one-night stand. The latter wouldn't matter so much if they hadn't worked so hard to take him the other direction just minutes earlier.

That takes us to Mike Dexter who is written to represent what we all think happens to the king of the school once he leaves high school. He becomes a mess of a human being and finds out that his best days were in high school. Again though, the character is so oddly written that it feels cartoony. There is a scene towards the end where he tries to get Amanda to take him back in front of everyone and blurs the line between macho confidence and desperate neediness. The shift between the two is too sudden though in the scene. It's not a natural progression of the character. The ending of that particular scene is funny to me because it's so random but your mileage will vary on that.

Which leads us to Amanda Beckett, played by the stunning Jennifer Love Hewitt. I will be up front and say I have always carried a certain affinity for Ms. Hewitt. I will readily admit though that it only partly has to do with her acting. The part here is not a great one for her though until the end. Hewitt's personality is always so bubbly and upbeat and she has/had a habit of taking roles that asked her to be morose at every turn taking away from her natural gifts. Here she is asked to be moping around the party (I suppose) as she is trying to gauge how she fits into the world now that high school is over. She knows she was dating the king of high school and she has no plans for the future. She laments at one point that she doesn't know herself when she isn't with Mike which is a natural feeling to have for a girl who would be graduating high school. But Hewitt doesn't quite pull that off effectively. There is supposed to be an internal struggle here but her face and body language never fully conveys that. At the end she gets to play doe eyed hopeful girl and it's there again where she shines. Mostly because, that si directly in the vein of what she can play. I've often wondered how she chooses scripts because there are definite talents she has but she hardly ever plays to them. In films where she has (Heartbreakers, even Ghost Whisperer to an extent) she shines and is very good.

It seems like a common theme here that the script isn't great and overall that really is this case. Most of the characters in this are written almost as caricatures. That's not to say that is always a bad thing- as the movie I will review next will show. The point of writing a character though is to keep them grounded in some form of reality. There is a funny character arc for Kenny but they go too over the top in presenting him as a wannabe. There is a good arc for Mike but they go too far in presenting him as the dumb jock whose best days are over. There is a good arc for William, but the story is way too predictable and over the top. The best two written characters are Preston and Denise but that's because both of their stories come from a grounded first position and never get too overly silly, although they do get close with Denise at times in the conversations with Kenny.

That's not to say this is a bad film. It's a fun film and you'll have fun spotting the characters you went to high school with. Also, it's fun to play spot the celebrity as the cast here is a wide array of talented people who moved on to higher profile roles. In particular look for:

Melissa Joan Hart
Donald Faison
Breckin Meyer
Jason Segel
Jamie Pressely
Freddy Rodriguez
Erik Palladino
Selma Blair
Sara Rue
Jerry O'Connell
Jenna Elfman

Some pop up in pronounced roles, and some have cameos where they offer sage advice to one character or another.

If you go in not expecting too much you won't be let down. If you go in expecting clearly defined characters you will be.

Schools Out Week- Back to School

It wasn't really my intention to turn this theme week into one where I just watch movies from a particular level of school. I was worried about having too many high school movies and not enough college ones but then something hit me- there aren't a lot of good movies that take place at college. That doesn't mean that they are all bad, because that's certainly not the case. However, the ones that are good stand out so heavily because the competition doesn't really rise to the highest tide. Good Will Hunting is a great drama and the Oscars recognized that. Old School and Road Trip were beloved in the early 2000's as raunchy comedic romps. But those sort of have a been there done that quality to them. Hunting is a film I'd like to touch on at some point but after the drama on Monday, and the drama disguised as a comedy yesterday I needed to back load this week with comedies.

Seeing as that is my mission than for most people they would assume I would have to do Animal House. As far as comedies go it's right near the top of the list. However, to me it feels sort of like a movie everyone knows. It's ubiquitous. It's been parodied, analyzed, and quoted into a mass of a film and there's really no new ground I can hook into it. Often when people discuss the best songs of all time they point to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven," as being the best epic song. Animal House is sort of like that. If you buy that analogy, then Back to School starring Rodney Dangerfield is Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song." A beautiful helter skelter style piece of art that is nothing more than candy for the senses. This is a fun movie and it's one you need to see if you've never done so.

I think it's sad that there is a significant portion of people that don't quite understand how popular Rodney was at one point in his career. He was a great stand up comedian and then he was everywhere in popular comedies of the early 1980's. Caddyshack is the one everyone knows, but Easy Money was very good as was this film. In the 90's Rodeny did an animated film and then bit parts before getting Meet Wally Sparks and My 5 Wives (both terrible films). The premise is one of those only in the movies plots.

Thornton Meloni is a true rags to riches story. He didn't have a good education and his dad was incredibly tough on him as a youngster. One day Meloni goes to visit his son at college and realizes that he has been telling him lies about being on the swim team at school. The son is considering dropping out so Thornton decides to enroll in the college in a sign of solidarity with his son trying to convince him to stay enrolled. From there you get a similar type of film to Caddyshack where the tight crusted literati is against the more free-wheeling ways of Rodney' character which creates conflict.

What sells the film though is similar to what sells Caddyshack. It isn't just focused around Rodney providing punchlines and quips. There are some great performances surrounding everything here provided by actors like Sally Kellerman, Robert Downey Jr. and William Zabka. But the star of the film is clearly Dangerfield, and not just because of the comedy.

It's hard to determine whether this part or Al from Caddyshack is the better role, but I think it's safe to say that Thornton here is a more refined version of Al. Not better or classier, but Rodney seemed to have a better handle on how to play the part without the rough edges. This happens because this is basically the character that Rodney had worked on for years in his stand-up act. Rodeny's act was always about an undercurrent of proving he wasn't a loser even though that is how the people with money-like him- viewed him. Rodeny was keenly aware that the best way to get at those people was to undercut them at every turn. Force them to show that they aren't as polished around the edges like they want to pretend to be. It's an image they portray and Rodney was all about cutting thorough that and essentially saying, "Cut the crap."



The part does move away enough from Dangerfield's "I can't get any respect," style though to not feel like a warmed over version of his act. It's familiar ground for sure, but there are enough nuances in the character that it never feels stale- which is something that actors today have trouble with. The lines in this film are great and the one-liners come fast and furiously throughout.

- Bring us a pitcher of beer every seven minutes until somebody passes out. And then bring one every ten minutes

-  How would you characterize "The Great Gatsby"?
  He was... uh... great!

- The football team at my high school, they were tough. After they sacked the quarterback, they went after his family.

All those line work and there are more where they came from. This is a film that feels fresh 25 years later and is inherently rewatchable which is something you can't say about a lot of comedies.

Schools Out Week- Class

The good thing about doing this blog is that every once in a while I'll come across a film that I had no idea existed until I started searching for content. It's a bonus to me when I do some research on the film and see that it contains some actors that I generally like. That was the case with this 1983 film as it features the film debuts of John Cusack, Virginia Madsen, Alan Ruck, Andrew McCarthy, and Lolita Davidovich (the first three are actors I like). The problem though is that this is a bad movie on so many levels. It's so bad I don't even know how much I even want to talk about it which is leading to this introduction that is being written but going no where. I guess I should slog through it.

Jonathan (McCarthy) heads off to prep school where he meets his roommate "Skip" (played by Rob Lowe). Skip is dressed in women's underwear and convinces Jonathan that there is some parade that happens at the the beginning of every school year. So they both get dressed and head outside with Skip pushing Jonathan out the door and then locking it behind Skip while the entire school body laughs at Skip.

To retaliate, Jonathan pretends like he has hung himself in the dorm room and when Skip runs to get help he brings back the dean and they see a mannequin hanging there with a picture of the dean's face. Skip then realizes that Jonathan is hiding int he closet once everyone leaves and they bond over their practical jokes. From there a friendship is born.

Skip makes it his mission to get Jonathan a date and tries to set him up with women on campus by getting him on the dance committee. This leads to a slapstick style scene with the girls that ends with Virginia Madsen's top being ripped open. The entire first 30 minutes of the movie is actually fine. It's not good or anything but it plays like a comedy and is at least never boring. But then the movie turns when Jonathan gets sent to Chicago by Skip to meet a woman for a sexual encounter. While there Jonathan gets picked up by an older woman and begins having an affair with her. They meet a few times and it's clear that Jonathan is smitten.

Skip takes Jonathan home for Thanksgiving and it's then that we find out that Jonathan's woman is Skip's mom. He tries to break it off but Skip's mom is persistent and wants to continue the relationship. Jonathan is at first worried about this but meets her at a hotel room to fool around. At the same time Skip brings along a bunch of friends to party with Skip and finds out what the viewer knows and is shocked. He gets mad and refuses to talk to Jonathan. There is also a side plot about Jonathan cheating on his SAT's to get into the school and get to Harvard and Skip knows this. Will he tell? Why should we care?

Then in the final confrontation Skip blows off Jonathan and Jonathan hounds him leading to Skip punching him in the face. At this point it's silly for the viewer to root for Jonathan in any way but the director and screenwriter want us to. Then the worst fist fight in the history of film commences. Skip heads into the woods and Jonathan jumps him from behind yelling, "Come here, you wanna fight." Then he picks up a rock and screams, "Leave me alone." Jonathan fights this thing like he is bi-polar. He wants to fight but he doesn't. Then they both run all the way back to campus and have a small fight in their dorm room before making up and Skip says, "Hey your mom called," making a joke about his best friend continually having sex with his mom. Makes zero sense and by the end I couldn't muster up the energy to care.

This is not really a good film as it can't decide if it wants to be a broad comedy, an earnest drama, or a coming of age parallel story about a woman trying to manage a spot in her life similar to the spot where Jonathan is at. Had the film explored any of those three options for the duration it would've worked better. As it is, it just falls completely flat. My score is a reflection of the first 30 minutes and young Virginia Madsen.

Schools Out Week- The Education of Charlie Banks

It's a special theme week here on the blog. School let out for college aged kids last month and will be letting out for high school kids in the next week or two. I chose to do the theme this week because next week I'll be taking some summer classes and will not have as much downtime to catch up on flicks. Trying to figure out what to watch it felt like this movie was a great place to start. The conceit of school is to graduate and to move on to the next step in life. This movie is directed by a guy who was trying to graduate from the image that was out there of him at the time. The Education of Charlie Banks is directed by Fred Durst- yes, that Fred Durst.

In the late 90's and early 2000's, Durst was considered to be a bit of a clown to many. He was at the forefront of the rap/rock craze, with his band Limp Bizkit, putting out terrible music for the masses to listen to. In the latter part of the decade though he decided to try his music video directing talents with feature films. This was the first film he directed although it was the second one released to theaters. Also, it is the perfect sort of film for him to attach himself to. But does that mean it's a good film?



Charlie Banks is a kid who is sort of looking for a place to fit in with his group of friends. His best friend comes from a rich friend but doesn't like to admit his family is rich. Charlie likes him but is jealous and doesn't understand why he is so afraid to admit to what he is. Charlie meets Mick Leary through his buddy at a party. Mick gets into a verbal altercation with two jocks at the party and they fight in the street. Well it's a fight of sorts as Mick beats up both jocks with a beer bottle then kicks both in the head leaving them badly injured and requiring hospital stays. Charlie has a pang of conscience here and goes to the police to give a statement about what happened and get Mick put away. Mick gets arrested for a few days but then Charlie pulls his statement letting Mick get set free.

Three years later Charlie and his friend, Danny, are in college and are starting to figure out how they can fit schools and women into the same life. One day Mick shows up at their dorm and Danny invites him to stay a while. Charlie is immediately worried because he doesn't know if Mick knows Charlie ratted him out. To further confuse Charlie, Mick acts at different intervals nice and menacing to Charlie.

The key to Mick being there though is how he begins assimilating to the culture of students at the University. A majority of the kids are rich preppy kids with parents that have big bank accounts and are not afraid to give that money to their kids. Mick gets invited to stay longer and begins wearing clothes Charlie and Danny's friend Leo loans him. He begins reading Charlie's books and auditing his classes. He also begins dating the girl that Charlie has pined for quite a while (played by the absolutely lovely Eva Amurri).

The hitch here is that while Charlie is completely terrified of Mick- he feels a closeness to him. Mick is like Charlie. In fact, they are opposite sides of the same coin. Neither one has money, but Charlie lacks the chameleon like quality that Mick has. It's easy for Mick to drift into this world and become a part of it. In large part because, he isn't really interested in that world. Mick is a schemer and one thing he is good at is being a snake. He can manipulate people to get what he wants out of them. Charlie lacks that ability and quite frankly doesn't want it. However, he can't help but notice how good his life could be if he had a small portion of the same qualities that Mick does. Charlie could have the girl of his dreams and this wonderful life somewhere between not having money and having it. He even begins to question whether the pull of this life could reform someone as lost as Mick. By the end of the movie we get our answer and because it's a coming of age type drama it isn't necessarily a happy ending. In fact, the ending is sort of hokey and overly dramatic. The film does a great job of telling this wonderful story about class assimilation and "fitting in" but then the last scene drops the ball completely. The problem is that the script borrows too heavily at the end and becomes a knockoff of the two works that clearly inspired aspects of it- Raging Bull and The Great Gatsby. Also the shoehorned usage of Derrida wasn't really necessary (And I say that only partly since I read some Derrida stuff recently and wanted to beat him).

However, none of that really detracts from the point that Durst does a nice job here with the directing. The film looks great, and the lighting surrounding Mick as he drifts between menacing and nice is wonderfully done. It's clear that Durst has an eye for what he wants to do and even though it needs some polish, there is a solid foundation here.

Jesse Eisenberg is solid in the lead role and hopefully it stops the comparisons between him and Michael Cera. Eisenberg plays similar roles in films, much like Cera, but Eidenberg finds different nuances in the roles so they aren't all interchangeable. The real find here though is Jason Ritter who plays the sociopath Mick. He finds the correct note as he drifts back and forth in his personalities. and keeps Charlie, and the viewer, guessing. He seethes through his teeth and his looks make you buy into what he is doing even if morally you recognize that it is incredibly wrong.

This is a decent film but there is too much voiceover, and the script is a huge let down as it drags at points and at others it borrows to heavily from other sources. Too often it feels like a greatest hits movie rather than anything unique. It's a shame because it wants to be earnest but can't find a thread of truth to latch onto. Derrida would have his own theory on that.

The death of torture porn

(Be warned- there are massive spoilers ahead for the movie, A Serbian Film. If you ever want to see that movie it may be a bad idea to read this post. If you never want to see the film and read on understand that the spoilers are of a graphic nature because the film mentioned is of an extremely graphic nature.)

Back in 2005, film critic David Edelstein introduced into movie vernacular the term “torture porn.” It was used to describe a style of film that became popular with mainstream cineplexes during the middle of the first decade of the 2000’s. It’s a term that sort of needed to be popularized. There were a ton of films that came out during that decade that seemed to serve no purpose other than to push the limits of what their audience would watch. Hostel, The Devil’s Rejects, Saw, Wolf Creek- all were films that amped up the gore factor to make audiences squirm. Edelstein’s term was used in a manner to denigrate the audiences who liked those films. In its simplest definition, torture porn is the idea that its viewers are intensely, pruriently aroused by the sight of human bodies -- usually young, nubile ones, and quite often female -- getting torn into bloody chunks in the most awful ways imaginable. And in some ways- I agree with Edelstein. There was a huge section of the audience that liked those types of films not because they brought a great story to the screen, but rather because they found creative ways to kill and maim people. However, the overreaching aspect of that term doesn’t quite fit. Even though there is a subsection of fans who love those films, it’s not something that encompasses all fans of horror films. Also, it’s not really a new idea that filmmakers try to amp up the gore. Cannibal Holocaust was a cult hit in the early 1980’s. Japanese films have been pushing their viewer’s stomachs to the edge for years, most notably in the film Audition which I don’t recommend watching unless you have a super strong disposition. For me though, horror films represent more than what the mainstream push of these films brought to the table. Granted I have no problem with the Saw films, and would still contend that the first 2-and-a-half films are excellent- before they became preoccupied with the gore factor. Also, Eli Roth, for all his faults, does have a certain appreciation for the genre and makes films that are intended to be a throwback to the films that permeated the back alley theaters of the 1970’s. For the longest time I never saw exactly what the uproar was in the films, and I certainly never saw any reason for the genre to end. As long as there is money to be made and the films retain some semblance of artistic pedigree (albeit small in most cases) they should be made since they represent an important sub genre. That was until I saw A Serbian Film though.

A Serbian Film is a 2010 film directed by Srdan Spasojevic. It starts out as a good little film before losing itself in its conquest to push the boundaries of good taste to its outermost brink, and then go further. It revolves around retired porn star Milos. He has a wife and a son and is looking for happiness in his new life. He is poor but his family loves him and he is relatively comfortable. The only obstacle he faces is the jealously of his brother Marko who is a cop.

One day Milos is approached by an old co-star and given the opportunity to appear in an “arty” porn film being directed by hot new director Vukmir. He sees this as one big final payday where he can get enough of a nest egg to move out of porn and give his family a stable financial base on which to create their new lives. Milos agrees to star in the film and is only mildly curious when Vukmir tells him it is important that he know relatively no details of the porn film in which he will be starring.

The next morning Milos is picked up and driven to an orphanage where he is given an earpiece by Vukmir’s driver. A film crew follows Milos in and he immediately encounters numerous sexual situations, obviously set up, to see how he will react. He goes along with it until he is instructed to have sex with a woman in a room while a young girl dressed like Alice in Wonderland watches. Milos is disgusted by this and refuses to participate. He is then grabbed from behind and forced to stay in the room. He approaches Vukmir about this later and is shown a film that Vukmir calls his “most recent masterpiece.” It’s here where this film goes from being some kind of statement to traveling wildly off the rails. Ready? Deep breath.

Vukmir’s film is his driver helping a woman give birth to a baby girl. Rasa, the driver, holds the child as it comes out and then wipes away the birthing fluids. Rasa then proceeds to rape the baby which Vukmir proudly calls, “newborn porn.” Milos is sickened by this and heads to his car and leaves. As he is sitting at a light he is approached by Vukmir’s doctor (a female) who seduces Milos. Three days later Milos wakes up- beaten, bloodied, and with no recollection of what happened. He returns to the scene of the film and finds a series of tapes which he begins watching. He sees that over the previous three days he was fed a mixture of drugs designed to keep him in a angry, sexually aroused, and easily susceptible to suggestions state.

The first tape shows Vukmir talking Milos into beating a woman up who is chained to a bed. Milos beats her and begins raping her while Vukmir tells him she deserves it for cheating on her husband, a Serbian war hero. In the climax Milos is convinced into chopping off her head with a machete to induce rigor mortis  as he continues to have sex with her.  Another tape shows Milos chained face down on a bed when two men enter the room. One guy holds a camera while the other one sodomizes Milos. The final tape shows his former co star chained to a pole in a room with all her teeth knocked out of her mouth. A guy enters with a mask on and proceeds to force the woman to have oral sex with him. As he finishes he shoves his stiff penis down her throat to choke her to death.

Milos begins following clues from the tapes and begins remembering more events from the past few days. He was taken into a room and forced to sodomize a body that was under a cover. The masked man enters the room and begins having sex with another body laying under covers next to the one that Milos is raping. The mask gets taken off and it is revealed to be Milos’ brother who is raping Milos’ drugged wife. The covers are then taken off the body that Milos is raping and it is revealed to be his own son who is bleeding from his rectum. A fight ensues and Milos manages to kill most of the bodyguards while his wife kills the brother. Milos goes to shoot the last bodyguard but sees he is missing an eye so he jams his erect penis into the man’s eye killing him. Milos then takes his family home and locks them in a basement. He contemplates suicide but his wife convinces him that they should all kill themselves to relive themselves of these horrific events. They shoot themselves on the bed and are left for dead. A little later, another director comes into the room with a second porn star and instructs him to “start with the little one.” End film. Sounds like a charming little film, no?

As the film started screening it ignited controversies as people debated the artistic merits of the film. The director maintained that he was looking to deliver a message about the political landscape of Serbia and how the government was metaphorically, and sometimes literally, taking advantage of its citizens. That in and of itself is a noble goal and that would’ve been a good film to watch. However, by casing that idea inside this type of film it wipes away any sense of context and just becomes a film challenging the viewer to look away. See if you buy into the concept of torture porn, and that the audience that likes those types of films is only interested in gore, then what really is the message you are sending? While you may be trying to draw attention to the larger issues of your homeland, you are also engaging the viewers who want to cheer the gory macabre. To those viewers, you aren’t delivering anything more than a 90 minute exercise in bar raising. Furthermore, you are doing so by going so far to the extreme that it ceases to be fun to watch the film. And really, that to me is where the concept of torture porn films started to fall apart.

Many people who watch horror films (not all) watch because they like to root for the victims. They want the victims to survive. The best horror films reflect not only our own fears but reflect how we want to believe we would be able to react in that situation. The original Texas Chainsaw Massacre is the perfect example of this for me. While Leatherface is an iconic villain, what drives that story is the last surviving girl and the viewer just wanting her to get away. That’s why that closing image is a haunting one. She jumps in the back of a pick up truck as it pulls away and Leatherface is left standing there dancing around with his chainsaw. It’s not really a happy ending, but it’s one where you can celebrate survival. Fast forward now to the Saw films of the 2000’s. What sells that first film, and ultimately the franchise, was not the gore. It’s that reveal at the end and the live or die nature of the traps. The traps always were designed to be explicit but the important aspect of those scenes was that they were cased in the idea of “How far would you go to save your life?” Could you disfigure yourself? Could you take out someone else? Could you do something as simple as follow directions and not allow your adrenaline to overtake your rationality? That was the fundamental driving force of those films. Without that, it’s just a lunatic building contraptions that would befuddle the best construction workers.

That is where A Serbian Film fails. There isn’t really a good character here to root for. Milos is the closest thing to your protagonist but he stays in the situation a little too long and is sort of blinded by his love of money. The goal is noble, but he turns a blind eye for far too long, so long in fact that he comes off like a dummy. The wife and kid are sympathetic but they are never given any real back story. The brother and Vukmir and his goons are the antagonists of the story but they are so over the top cartoony that it loses the effectiveness of the story. The scene where the brother is raping Milos wife goes from being this intense disturbing scene to being just silly when they cut to his face as he is raping her. Then when Milos finally gets his revenge- he reverts to the same methods as them and the final kill of the bodyguard is just silly and smacks more of the director trying to be cute rather than add a solid ending to the story.

The part with Milos there is a real let down though. With the protagonist you are supposed to identify with them but they aren’t supposed to lose their last thread of humanity in how they fight back. You need to fight back but it needs to be done in a way where they are surviving the situation and not becoming as bad as their captors. Milos does that in this film. If the message is that the government corrupts good people than on some level it works, but Milos is never put in a position where he earns that benefit. He is just as seedy as the people he rallies against.

Essentially I think the problem here is that the director may be trying to deliver a message drawing awareness to the situation of his country. The problem is the method in which he chooses to do so. As a dramatic film, and adjusting some of the events- or even leaving some to the imagination- would’ve made this film work better as a message. As it stands, it is just a mess of a film that suffers in the last hour of the film. More importantly though it finally made me see what the critics of this particular genre were getting at. This doesn’t present torture as some weird gritty underground goofiness, but rather as a reality that an entire country engages in. It doesn’t work here and there is no subtext, despite how hard some critics argue that there is. This doesn’t do anything to drive home the conflict and civil unrest in Serbia, it is just a film- like many other films that aims to gross out the viewer. It doesn’t work here but it does effectively drive a nail into the genre’s coffin.

Some quick hits on the summer hits- May

A couple things will be popping up over the blog in the next week or so. Tomorrow, I'm hoping, I will have a movie essay ready to go in my attempt to long form work through some ideas on the death of torture porn. Next week will be a theme week. I won't spoil it but will give this hint- school is getting real close to being done for the year.

Today though a new small feature that will appear over the next 4 months. The summer movie season is always a ton of fun as movie studios release their tent pole flicks trying to drive viewers to the theaters. So instead of writing long form essays on everything- I'll try and give some quick thoughts, leaving the longer reviews to films of days past for the summer. Sound good? Well too bad, it's my blog.

Thor has always been one of the odder characters in the Marvel universe. He's based off legitimate myths that are taught to kids in school and when you start explaining his back story it can get pretty damn convoluted. Here though, they do an excellent job of telling the back story but also telling a story that keeps the plot moving forward and never dulls the viewer. They do this by inserting the viewer directly into the middle of the story and then flashing back to a previous event. So instead of a cold open to the movie, they tease something happening and then show you why that thing happened. It's a different tactic but it's one that works. I found it especially refreshing after watching the first X-Men again last night. That movie is downright dull. That isn't me saying it's a bad film, but it's not really controversial to say that they take a long time to set up the story of the characters. By the time they get it all set up, the movie is close to its end. This helped the second film to be better. It already had the exposition down and it jumped right into the middle of the action. (And it's not really controversial to say that the third one kinda blew hard). But anyway, back to Thor- Chris Hemsworth is really great in this role, and Kenneth Brannagh brings some great flourish to his directing of the film. He is well versed in Shakespearean drama and gives some of the larger scenes that small touch. It really works here. This film is designed more for the masses so it may leave some hardcore comic fans cold, but this is a fun little popcorn flick with some great dramatic touches.

If Judd Apatow, Paul Feig, and Kristen Wiig's goal here was to prove that women can do raunch as well as the men- then I guess mission accomplished. However, that sort of sells the film short even though it was the running dialogue for critics of the film. This is a film that is full of heart and while there is craziness surrounding everything that happens, the very grounded performance by Wiig is what sells this film and makes it a revelation. Wiig plays the lifelong best friend of Maya Rudolph's bride and feels like she is being pushed aside by a new friend, played by Rose Byrne. On top of that, everything in Wiig's life is falling apart and this whole spectacle is making her feel less and less like a whole person and more a jigsaw puzzle of goals and objectives that she has failed to reach so far. There are some legitimate real sad moments here which run in a weird juxtaposition to the comedy, but it's those former scenes that really sell the latter ones. There is a glorious 5 minute scene where Wiig and Byrne deliver competing speeches at the engagement party- with each one trying to one up the other. You feel for Wiig's character as she knows Rudolph better than anyone there but she can't quite eloquently put that into words. Partly because she's not good at this type of thing, but also partly because she is downright jealous of her friend and is wrestling with how that feeling conflicts with happiness for her best friend. On top of that scene is a great scene on an airplane where Wiig does her best Lucille Ball impression and effectively garners laughs out of a situation that is so uncomfortable it makes you squirm just watching it. The big gross out scene is funny enough, but it doesn't feel germane to the rest of the story and is slightly out of place. Also, Melissa McCarthy is a riot as the completely over the top sister in law to be.

I've read and heard the complaints about this film so here is my take on this. Comedy sequels usually fail because they fundamentally change what made the first film so funny. It's why I'm sort of glad that the Anchorman sequel doesn't seem to be taking off. Sequels in general are the director and actors trying to one up everything from the original. Here this film goes the opposite direction. Todd Phillips takes the template from the first one and makes the exact type of film. Cross out Las Vegas, and add in Bangkok. Cross out missing groom, and add missing brother in law. It goes like that throughout the film. That doesn't mean it's a bad film though. In fact, this film has a much darker tone than the first one. It's not so much amping up the chaos, but moving it overseas, to a place that is seedy like Bangkok, takes away much of the sheen of the first one. This city doesn't look glamorous, it doesn't look like a fun time for a sober person- let alone someone who is drugged out of their mind. Zach carries aspects of the film this time around again, but Ed Helms is really the core of this film. We are put in his shoes often and his character is playing on the fears of being a foreigner in a foreign town. Even Bradley Cooper's character loses much of his cool edge here as he is concerned with just getting out of there. I think people went in expecting the first one with its winky tone and style, but got something with a much harsher edge. This is a comedy at its heart but is far more of a black comedy tone than first one which delved into slapsticky content quite often. It doesn't all work, and most of the laughs come from the familiarity of the situations and waiting for what will happen next, but there is enough to like here that makes it worth recommending.